Fazek's Translate tool

mkelley · Post by **mkelley** » Wed Nov 05, 2008 3:20 am

I spoke too soon -- I can't use Fazek's translate tool because it doesn't somehow work for bones, seemingly preempting the normal bone translate. Does anyone know how to make this work?

IOW, when I have Fazek's Translate points tool in the toolbox I can no longer get the "regular" bone translate tool to work when on a bone layer and pressing "T". At first glance it appears that Fazek's tool allows you to somehow move a bone's position without affecting what is boned, but this seems singularly unuseful to me (and keeps my shortcuts from working). OTOH, I need Fazek's approach to the spacebar playback key, so either I figure out how he does that (and edit the "normal" one accordingly) or figure out how to keep his tool from working with a bone layer (so far I'm having no luck at this -- I can disable his tool from working on bones, but it doesn't allow the bone translate tool to be selected with a shortcut key).

Hellllllppppp!

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Wed Nov 05, 2008 4:56 am

Wow, that is odd. I also use Fazek's trans point and LM's trans bone, both with the 'T' shortcut. I had never really played with Fazek's on a bone layer enough to notice that very odd behavior (but perhaps useful in some as yet unknown way

).

I've noticed that shortcut problem before too. I'm guessing that, if Fazek's trans point tool was the last used, trying to use the same shortcut immediately on the bone layer tends to call Fazek's first. It doesn't always happen though. I've never figured out why.

If you're setting up macros, set it to key the 'T' shortcut twice. When this happens to me, I just undo that odd bone translation and hit the shortcut button again to get the LM tool.

Off hand, I can't tell if there'd be an easy script solution. Both LM's and Fazek's trans bone tools are really complex.

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Wed Nov 05, 2008 8:23 am

I changed my shortcuts.

I use Fazek's translate points tool using the "T" shortcut. I do more with vectors than bones in general. I changed the ORIGINAL translate bones tool to the "Y" shortcut.

I also still have the ORIGINAL installed translate points tool which is also assigned the "Y" shortcut key. This is not a conflict because that tool is not active for bones and does not conflict. I keep the original because it allows for shift/constrain when moving points.

This was easier than trying to hack the code so the translate tool isn't active for bones.

-vern

mkelley · Post by **mkelley** » Wed Nov 05, 2008 1:41 pm

Yuck -- what a PITA. I really hate assigning another button to translate points just to work around this, but I guess that's what I'll have to do. There's no way I can hack though the LUA code to fix Fazek's stuff (why in the heck he messed up the bone translate is beyond me).

It really ought to be possible to "fix" the spacebar playback thingee in the original tool somehow -- obviously Fazek did it (although I'm thinking now that it was inadvertent. Much of what he does appears to work in this manner, more of a "hey, look what I made it do now!" rather than a clearcut objective to be accomplished). But since nothing I do with the Translate tool seems to have this effect I'm stumped for now (for some reason I can't even edit the text in the original translate tool to have it say something different).

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Wed Nov 05, 2008 6:13 pm

mkelley wrote:Yuck -- what a PITA. I really hate assigning another button to translate points just to work around this, but I guess that's what I'll have to do.

I made this change so long ago I've totally forgotten about it. The shortcuts I use now are second nature. Not a PITA for me anyway.

-vern

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 3:26 am

Okay, here you go Mike. This has driven me crazy since you posted it. I finally figured out how the LM script was disabling the spacebar playback shortcut.

Download my modified LM Translate Points tool here.

Turns out that AS has some hidden, internal interaction with a scripts ScriptName. I ended up just having to change that, the actual script name throughout the script (search & replace), and change all of those string references for the UI texts to just regular texts.

I hope that helps. It sounds like it was driving you crazy.

mkelley · Post by **mkelley** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 8:17 pm

Thanks for looking at this, Wes. So far, I'm not loving Fazek's replacement so this might be *very* useful.

I am so deep (and behind!) in production right now I might have to wait a few days before I can even look at this, though.

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Tue Nov 11, 2008 5:49 am

Mike,
If you like LM's translate points tool, that should work for you, but it feels very clumsy to me. I guess I'm too accustomed to Fazek's. If you want to use Fazek's you should be able to disable it for bone layers by changing this code:

Code: Select all

function FA_TranslatePoints:IsEnabled(moho)
	if (moho:CountPoints() > 0 or moho:CountBones() > 0) then
		return true
	end
	return false
end

To this:

Code: Select all

function FA_TranslatePoints:IsEnabled(moho)
	if (moho:CountPoints() > 0) and (moho.layer:LayerType() ~= LT_BONE) then
		return true
	end
	return false
end

I hope that helps once you clear the fog of production.

mkelley · Post by **mkelley** » Tue Nov 11, 2008 1:45 pm

I had already disabled it for bones, but it still meant having to remember (and assign to two buttons) two different shortcuts for translation depending on the layers.

Ideally what I'd like to do is to simply have Fazek's tool not preempt the bone translate tool -- but I can't figure that out.

And I'm not sure why you like it over the LM one -- I still have a huge amount of trouble with it trying to move a point it when it stubbornly thinks a previous one was selected. If perhaps the radius of selection was larger (and that might be something I can figure out how to change as well) I'd be okay, but as it is now unless I click precisely on that new point I end up moving the old one and messing things up. I can't tell you how many times I end up using the undo function when using his tool for translation.

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Wed Nov 12, 2008 12:10 am

Ah, I see. Yeah if I had done as much production as you have with the LM translate points tool, it would be very hard to get use to Fazek's. It's just a very different approach.

Mmm, that bit I changed above should have greyed the tool's icon out for bone layers, but doesn't seem to have done so.

-----------------------

Okay, I went through Fazek's translate points tool and disabled every little bit of bone code. Now when I switch to a bone layer, it reverts to the LM select bone tool (default behavior), and since there is no shortcut "T" tool selected, the T shortcut now brings up LM's translate bone tool.

This version of Fazek's translate points tool is now greyed out on bone layers. This should work how you want, Mike. If you're still interested in Fazek's translate points tool, I'll post it.

mkelley · Post by **mkelley** » Wed Nov 12, 2008 12:24 am

Yeah, sure, that would be good -- I'll continue to use Fazek's tool and perhaps I'll see the advantages.

Thanks for taking the time to look at this (I'm so in over my head right now...)

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Wed Nov 12, 2008 12:36 am

Here it is.

Hope you enjoy it, Mike.