February 10, 2011, 12:20:55 am
I have also encountered those problems, Simon.
I know it's not a solution but I think these entries on the Functionality wish list go some way towards dealing with the most critical issues:
- Easier system for moving/modifying/applying materials to objects that are close to other objects
- Shortcut key to turn snapping off completely when moving objects (Without this feature, objects that need to be in the air or objects that overlap other objects are very difficult to place correctly)
Lumion currently displays 5 sets of movement/modify/material gizmos regardless of how many objects there are, and it's sometimes very difficult to modify/move/edit the materials of the right object if multiple objects are close together.
Example: If you have more than 5 objects that are supposed to share the same pivot point, e.g. a terrain, x buildings, roads and other infrastructure and you have imported them separately (e.g. because you're collaborating with other people) and aligned them with the Align command, you essentially have to move one away from the others before you can use the modify commands, and then move it back again with the align command when you're done. This is not ideal, and I hope there's an elegant solution to this problem. I'd personally like to be able to click directly on the objects (as opposed to clicking on the gizmos) when I want to modify them, just like Advanced Move lets you do.
And speaking of which, I really like the way that Advanced Move lets you drag the objects around instead of having to use the gizmos that are positioned by the pivots. Since the pivots are sometimes far away from the object it often takes a bit of searching to find the right gizmo that lights up the bounding box of the object. In any case, clicking directly on the object to move it is just a more intuitive way of working but I think it could be improved a bit if there was a way to turn snapping-to-objects on and off. I was trying to position some of the new animated flags we have, and it's currently not easy to place something at specific positions in the air as they keep snapping to the ground and to other objects.
That being said, I should hasten to say that I'm not in charge of UI design (nor do I have to do the dirty work of implementing new functionality), so this is purely my personal opinion as a Lumion user