Multitouch User Interface

[Jax_Cavalera]

I'm working with a 10 point multi-touch capacitive display on Windows 8 and it would be really handy if I could navigate the scenes using the ALT key modifier in conjunction with multitouch ..

 

1 finger is rotate (this already works)

2 fingers is zoom in or out

3 fingers is pan

 

just those 3 touch inputs for a start would make it really easy to navigate with.

 

in Blender they use different key modifiers instead so it's :

 

Alt plus 1 finger touch = Rotate

Alt & Control plus 1 finger touch = Zoom

Alt & Shift plus 1 finger touch = Pan

 

This isn't ideal as I prefer to not keep changing key modifiers just for navigating the 3D Scene and now that there are a lot of multitouch touchpads coming out on laptop devices, this would likely help people in those situations to navigate as well.

 

Currently I need to plug a mouse in to navigate within 3D Coat because when I left click.. I can rotate fine.

 

When I try to left click and right click at the same time.. it does not register the 2nd click so it does either zoom or rotate.

 

If I want to pan I need to use my pinky to hold down the Alt Key whilst using my thumb to press the Right click button on the touch pad whilst using my other hand to touch the display for the left click whilst using my index finger on the same hand that's holding down the Right button on the touch pad to actually pan.

 

Currently touching the display for Rotate does rotate .. so long as you are holding down Alt (otherwise it can accidentally start messing with your mesh) the problem arises as follows :

 

I hold Alt and touch my display and slide my finger along and the view rotates as expected.  I didn't quite get a full 360 degree rotation and need to rotate a little further so i release my finger (which has reached the edge of my display)  and place it back near the middle and continue to slide it in the same direction to continue rotation as expected.

 

What happens though is the view snaps back as if my mouse flew from the edge of the display to the middle in an instant and I'm not able to rotate any further around than I had previously achieved without using my touch pad to move the cursor to the middle and THEN re touching with ALT to start the slide motion for rotation again.

 

I think that 3D Coat is using relative mouse mode instead of absolute which could be why this is happening.  As my device does not have a Pressure Sensitive Pen or Wacom pen I do not have the ability to follow other tutorials that address using a pressure pen in here and I do remember one of those topics discussing the problem of Relative vs Absolute Mouse Coordinates needing to be changed.

 

In the mean time I will look into where this is actually.. didn't think of that till right now but yeah if the compatibility for multi touch were added that would be super awesome and save my brain breaking from the finger gymnastics required to perform a pan without a mouse being plugged in