Walk/Fly WASD+Mouse Navigation Mode

SketchUp Feature Requests
1

Greetings fellow Sketchers, peace be with you.

Does anyone think it would be nice to have a WASD walk/fly mode for Sketchup? I would! :raising_hand_man:

I think it would be cool to be able to walk and look around at the same time. I’m not sure how to achieve this with the walk around tool. A strafe or side-stepping motion is, as far as I can tell, impossible with the walk-around tool, but it’s essentially a pan that’s locked on the Z-axis. Gotta switch tools for that though.

I think this WASD mode would need its own configurable mouse sensitivity settings so the user wouldn’t have to rub a hole into their mousepad trying to spin 360° using the look around.
(Should add a menu for that in regards to the standard look around tool also if there isn’t one already.)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty good at getting around my model with the standard pan, zoom, and orbit but for doing a walkthrough video for a customer I find that the walk around navigation looks very unnatural which may very well be due to my lack of practice, but some movements are seemingly impossible to do with the walk around tool.

There have been others who have brought up the desire for this feature, but for some reason, I haven’t seen a feature request on it.

Rendering software like Enscape, Twinmotion, Lumion, V-Ray, offer this type of navigation and I assume this is because it looks and feels so natural to move this way, and it’s a 3D navigation familiar to a lot of people.

Anyhow, these are just some thoughts. If I got to choose how the WASD navigation worked, I’d say the walk/fly mode found in Enscape, (or preferably Minecraft) would be a good example to follow.

Thanks,
Braden

2

For reference, there have been a few earlier discussions of WASD navigation:

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3

Indeed, that’s the exact topic I was referring to. I went through most of it but found there was no solution. Surprisingly, there isn’t an extension for this type of navigation either.

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4

What about this:
SketchUp Plugins | PluginStore | SketchUcation | FPSNav

Also someone working on a fork…:

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5

O.o

Maybe I should’ve done more research, I’ll check those out!

6

Grr, I never know how to download and install stuff from GitHub. I don’t know any code.

EDIT: Got the zip but don’t see an .rbz file to instal the normal way.

7

Then better to don’t do it … :wink:

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8

Wise! But I’m willing to learn for this situation. Though I realize raw code from anywhere can be dangerous, and not working with it correctly can mess up your system even if it’s harmless.

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Think you can help me out @dezmo?

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Anyway it is not properly wrapped as extension. I really do not recommend it.

If you still want it, click here

If you unzip it you will get a Folder FPSNav-for-SketchUp-master
There will be a folder an file:

FPSNav
Chatham_FPSNav.rb

Zip it to a new file and rename it to FPSnav.rbz

Now you can open SU and install this file by Extension manager

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11

Do you think it’s dangerous?

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I did not find any harmful code with a quick check, but could be conflicted by other extension…
Before you try > backup backup >backup*. :wink:

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13

Like a restore point?

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I don’t think so. The max problem I can guess that SU will not start. (1% chance :wink:)

In that case you can still remove the plugin manually form c:\Users\YOU_USER_NAME\AppData\Roaming\SketchUp\SketchUp 2021\SketchUp\Plugins\

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15

Perhaps I didn’t follow your instructions correctly.

16

Sorry about the post in the other thread.
I went ahead and downloaded the .rbz from sketchUcation.

I wish the vertical looking around could be inverted. Some keyboard shortcuts had to go to make it work, but other than these things it seems to work fine.

EDIT:

Found a solution to this one in the comments section on sketchUcation under the extension.
http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=39606#p494968

One can use the arrow keys, or even the 8456 on the num pad to move also! Don’t need to change hotkeys. Very kewl.