Navigation Controls - so clunky!

[Michelle Folkman]

Just started using Skanect about a month ago. Great product, except....Maybe it's just me but I find the navigation (pan, zoom, rotate) to be very clunky. Am I alone in this? Any hints?

[Nicolas Burrus]

Hi Michelle,

On which platform are you using it? Mac or Windows? Are you using a
trackpad or a mouse?

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[Michelle Folkman]

Hi all,

I'm using on a Macbook Pro 2.5 i7 with 16 G ram, NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB. Little small?. 

Oh, with a mouse or Wacom. It's not that it's slow or like that, it's that it's awkward, trying to get the model in the center, rotate it, etc. Always seems to want to bank and skew to the side and I have to reset and painstakingly zoom in again. Just slows me down. What do you all think?

Michelle

[Bart]

I agree Michael. I'm on Windows 8.1. It is responsive enough, but it never seems to orient easily - like you pointed out. Even pan seems to skew the bounding box and model. While many other 3D viewers all have different keys or buttons for doing things, they're easier to manipulate to the view you want. There may be some hot keys for standard views like right, front, top, etc, but I don't know where to find them.

[toerrefil]

Agreed!
Using Skanect on a Macbook Pro 13"

Compared to almost any other 3D-tool, the navigation seems to be somewhat off. As pointed out, it seems to rotate or change perspective in a weird way, and not as I'm used to, working with other software. 

As Michelle says, it's usable, but takes extra time to get the desired view. Hotkeys for different views (like the already available Reset Camera button) would be a quick solution to this problem though.

[Michelle Folkman]

I am so glad to hear it isn't just me. I wonder what the difference is between, say, Blender's navigation and Skanect's? In terms of code I mean. 

[Pot8oSh3D]

Totally with you there, dude.

And, like Michelle, I just thought it was me! LOL

AndyL

[Pot8oSh3D]

Don't want to prompt a feeding frenzy here but, while I'm at it, there is one other gripe I'd like to point out:...

When I'm moving and scaling the bounding box, before I do a (usually second) offline reconstruction, I find that it can be rather frustrating. Two reasons really:

1) The Up/Down, Left/Right etc boxes don't seem to be obvious - I always forget which one is which - and the resolution for steps is usually FAR too big.

2) It takes AGES to line up a ground plane horizontally. I line it up in X, turn it round to Y, line it up, go back to X, it needs to be lined up again...etc...etc...etc. There MUST be a better way.

It would really help if you could give this some attention soon.

Cheers,

AndyL 

[Bart]

You're right Andy. A simple set of orientation buttons would go a long way toward putting the view in a standard orientation - top, fron, side, etc., like all the other 3D programs out there. I don;t know how it would address the circumstance of when the scan is a little off-axis. Maybe it would make sense to hold 'alt' or 'cmd' buttons down to change the manipulations to the model instead of the bounding box. The +1 and +0.1 etc buttons help, but if we could just grab the model and reorient it in the bounding box, it could go a long way toward helping the poor controls.

On Monday, March 23, 2015 at 4:42:43 PM UTC-4, Michelle Folkman wrote: