Smarter Blender - better workflow with the mouse/trackballs

Support Basics & Interface
#1

Hi,

as I work with Blender every day at my work I see certain things
that should be improved if they’re not already.

  1. Support for 5-button mouse (why stop there…7–9)
    I want to “pan with button 5 side to side”
    I also want to avoid using the keyboard for basic speed modelling

  2. Support for an EXTRA mouse reserved for rotating the viewport
    this could either be a trackball or a mouse or a “spaceball 5000” etc…

this would be great…that way we can rotate view “LIVE” while moving
vertices around.

Any possible? or? Anyone want to try to implement it?

In advance - Thanks for your kind thoughts on this.

/JoOngle

#2

I made a feature request for spaceball support a long time ago. I work with a spaceball all day (3D CAD) and I know how liberating it is. In Blender it would increase productivity, ease of use, even shear modeling ability immensely. For anyone not familiar with it, it’s not just a simple trackball. With your left hand (for the right-handed) you fly around your model, moving and rotating in total freedom. It’s very intuitive and comfortable and soon it seems your movement is controlled directly by your thought. Meanwhile, your right hand is working with the mouse. I think you really have to try it to appreciate it. If I couldn’t use a spaceball anymore, I think I’d quit doing CAD. It makes that much difference.

#3

Don’t these spacebal and other advanced input devices have drivers that let you bind keys / key-combinations to specific buttons?
I have a boomslang, and they provide you with a lot of options to customize your mouse buttons.
Although I never tried it in combination with blender, it works perfect for a lot of other applications.

#4

Yes they do. Mine is 3003c and it has 2 buttons. I have them set to restore view and restrict to pan. Other models have more buttons. 3003c is most comfortable.

#5

When I bought my Wacom Graphire3, I mapped the two buttons on the pen to the Middle and Right mouse buttons. That way, I was able to use the pen instead of the mouse; gave a little more control than the mouse :smiley:

#6

I got my 4000FLX secondhand for extremly cheap and have never stopped using it since…well except in blender

Don’t these spacebal and other advanced input devices have drivers that let you bind keys / key-combinations to specific buttons?
I have a boomslang, and they provide you with a lot of options to customize your mouse buttons.
Although I never tried it in combination with blender, it works perfect for a lot of other applications.

Yes they do. Mine is 3003c and it has 2 buttons. I have them set to restore view and restrict to pan. Other models have more buttons. 3003c is most comfortable.

If there is a workaround i would like to hear it cuz i cant get blender to recognize the ball just the buttons :frowning: whats the point in using the buttons if you cant use the ball

SB 4000FLX [serial]
Windows XP

#7

Does the spaceball work in Windows as a pointing device (if you move the ball does the mouse cursor on screen move?). If the spaceball only works in a specific application then it may not work in Blender or any other app unless it has specific support for it.

#8

Hi !

I had never read anything about spaceball before,but I’have seen a very usefull tool for modelling: the retro-force arm. It is an articulated robot arm terminated by a pencil manipulated by the modeler.This tool drives a little virtual sphere,use as a sculptor tool to scrap volumes. It allows fast and accurate modelling. I don’t know if such tool could be used with Blender. It has been used to model the characters of the french animation movie “Kaena” produced by Xilam.

Philippe.