Newbie here. I did search for this topic, but didn’t come up with anything.
I would like to change default keyboard shortcuts to enable PC gaming style camera control while designing, where A and D pans left and right, W moves forward, S moves back, and the mouse look controls the direction. Has anyone else done this? Does it sound feasible?
Interesting and it might be be possible with a plugin. Seems a shame to consume keyboard shortcuts for something you can already do with the center mouse wheel/button and Shift. Most of the navigation is one handed and when you stop navigating, you return to the tool you were using. If you were using the keys for navigation as you suggest, you’d have to do something to end the navigation such as hit Escape or select a new tool. compared to the current method of navigating through the mouse, the keyboard method seems like more work to me.
plugins have been written in the past, but all seem to die away when users realise the full extent of the compromise…
they only really make sense in a ‘Presentation’ mode…
I don’t know of any actively developed one and the links to a few I followed were broken…
look for ‘first person shooter navigation’ and you may find one, but they mostly used arrow keys as well, which are harder to override in v17…
john
First (since your a newb) … try out the walkthrough mode …
… go into Window > Preferences > Shortcuts,
and assign the W key to Camera > Walk
Then when you wish to navigate, hit the W key to actiavte the Walk camera tool.
Now in Walk:
LMB+Drag = spins left & right (slowly), and walks in & out (slowly)
CTRL+LMB+Drag = spins left & right (fast), and Runs in & out (fast)
SHIFT+LMB+Drag = drifts left, right, up and down (slowly)
ALT (in combo with others) = goes through objects (no collision)
MMSCROLL = Zooms in & out quickly (works all the time)
MMB = Looks around (camera pan & tilt quickly, this is normally Orbit)
SHIFT+MMB = Pan (grab view target and move it around, works all the time)
RMB = brings up the Camera popup(context) command menu
ESC = re-activate previous tool (or the SelectionTool)
Okay, see how much control you have over the camera, and it’s position, using the left and middle mouse buttons, moving the mouse, along with modifier keys (SHIFT, CTRL, ALT.)
You can quickly switch in and out this “cam control mode” via W and ESC.
My point here is that (expanding on what Dave was getting at,) … is that it’d take the custom programming of about 16 keys to match all the Walk mode’s functionality.
That’s like half of them, and would severely limit keys for other tools, and toggles.
Thanks, everyone. Considering all the replies, it seems that my idea wouldn’t be all that profitable. I think the only way it might be helpful is if it were a default, always-on kind of thing. But, since it appears that most people like the current process, that is very unlikely.
Since I’ve put a few more hours into using the software, the current system isn’t too bad. It wasn’t nearly as intuitive (for me) as a first-person shooter control, but it has worked out ok.
Again, thanks for the replies.
It is less than unlikely. It will never happen “out-of-the-box” as
A is for the ArcTool, and S is for the ScaleTool.
It could be done, if the commands (via Ruby script) were loaded, and you re-define those 4 keys to the commands.
But what specifically would a single key tap do ?
Ie, how many degree of pan for each tap,… how much to step forward or back (in zoom %.)
The main issue with your thinking, is that we do not model down near the floor as if we are walking around inside the model. (This is for presentation later on.) We model in perspective from up above, like from a Isometric “looking down” perspective.)
So, spinning the camera, and moving it forward can be looking at nothing very quickly.
This is a well known approach in Unity editor. I also miss this feature a lot. In Unity the hot-key mapping problem is solved easily: you have to click and hold RMB, and while doing so, ASDW+Mouse works as in game navigation