3d gizmo manipulation

[pikok85]

Hi. Not a bug but probably a nice improvement for some.

My daily workflow consists of 3ds max and After Effects.

I often export camera and nulls from 3ds max, but the known issue is scale - scenes exported from 3ds max are about 100 times smaller in AE - it means that I'm forced to work in very small units in AE like 1% size of layers etc. In that scale the 3d transform gizmo is frenzy fast and basically unusable, because it's designed to work in a certain scale. When the scene is big, the gizmo is super slow and drags behind the cursor. It feels like the manipulation speed is multiplied by some sort of scene scale factor. It would be nice if the manipulation speed would be screen scale dependant, and not scene scale dependant - meaning that it would be relative and have the same speed in pixels in relation to the screen. In other words, just stick it to the mouse cursor:) I hope you know what I mean. I know that there are different tools for exporting from 3d party software, that incorporate a scale multiplier, but still it's sometimes tricky to get the scale right and it's a real pain in AE, especially when working fast or prototyping.

Thanks for taking my suggestion into consideration.

Best regards

Paul

[nishu_kush]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for writing in.

If possible, please share a screen recording that shows the problem so that we can understand the issue better. We can try to find you a workaround.

We're here to help.

Thanks,

Nishu

[pikok85]

Hi. Thanks for replying.

I knew that my explanation felt a bit foggy.

Attached you'll find a screen recording showing the issue. When I drag the gizmo, null is moving fast than cursor, i noticed that it "snaps" to full pixel values - maybe thats the issue.

Hope it helps.

Best regards

Paul

[pikok85]

*null is moving fastER than cursor*

Btw - in all 3d packages gizmo just stays with cursor - it's more natural and predictable.

[pikok85]

I've attached the project file as well. Not to say, the issue is more pronounced with smaller scale scenes. It's opposite in massive large scenes, where gizmo "drags" behind cursor.

I've overexplained it at this point probably:)

Best regards

P

[ShiveringCactus]

Hi Paul,

Its been a while since I struggled with this myself.  A tip I seem to remember was to parent all the Nulls to another Null and then scale that null up.  Everything should scale up too.  You should then be able delete the new null and the coordinates should remain.

Alternatively, recently I had a camera travelling around 8000 pixels, but it still wasn't moving fast enough and there were lots of intermediate keyframes.  Instead of manually adjusting them, I added this expression to the position:

value*2

That doubled all individual properties (for my purposes I went on to refine it to control the multiplier with a slider and had the X and Y values multiply by half as much).