Default transform axis in 2.8x

The shortcut to change orientations is comma key.

You’re starting to sound like one of those tech support places that just reads a book back without reading what someone wrote.

I know I can change the orientation to normal. The point is, I can’t leave it there without changing the way the orientation controls work, kicking me out of any working state I’m in whilst I fumble with the fact my keys just changed.

So, I can either change orientation to Normal then change it back every time I want to use normal, or I can try and switch between working the way I want and the way I don’t want to. I want to work with global first, because it is more useful to me to have global first. Currently, if I make normal accessible for a while, because I’m using it as a secondary orientation for a while, I have to relearn and retrain my brain for that brief period, because I can’t make normal accessible without moving global off the key combo I have in muscle memory from working primarily with the orientation setting on ‘global’.

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So basically you want to do the things old way, without having to learn anything new, even at the cost of the old way being slower…?

You can for example have orientation set to global and then in the new move tool, set the orientation override in the tool to normal. Now you have access to both global and normal mode at the same times, even without the clumsy triple hotkey combo.

Alternatively you can use shrink/fatten to move along normals instead of normal orientation.

It’s got nothing to do with the “old way”, it has to do with what’s faster for what I work with, and I don’t understand how it can’t possibly be the norm given most people align their objects, scenes etc to the global coordinate system. So the way that is more useful for working with, for me, someone who uses global transforms far more often than any other, is for global to be on the first keypress, and the arbitrary orientation on the second.

So I get used to working that way, global first, arbitrary orientation second, and I can kind of do that in 2.8. But when I change my secondary orientation and need to work on normal orientations for a while, (and I’ll still be using global primarily and in-between), I don’t want the controls to be all backwards and suddenly change to arbitrary-first, global-second. It screws with everything, as though someone swapped two keys on your keyboard everytime you wanted to type in italics or something.

I’d just rather flow not be broken when I use an orientation other than local. The only alternative to which I have right now, is to switch the orientation mode back to global every time I’ve performed one operation in one of these other orientations, Normal for example, despite the fact I’m more likely to then need normal orientation again sometime soon than I am to need the local that I get in global orientation, given I’m obviously working on something that needs normal orientation from time to time.

I don’t use the move tool or the gizmos, they’re slow and clunky. I also wouldn’t be inclined to use the gizmo in one corner case for the same reason as above, suddenly one case causing me to have to shift control scheme is terrible.

@eobet
I think you’re under the impression that 2.79 cycled all orientations as you pressed the axis key, but it didn’t, it cycled between none, global, then the currently selected one. So there was no shortcut for transforming along the normal unless you had the normal orientation selected, the same is the case now.

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you made me think of something a little funny …
Why we do not use the “capslock” for those functions that we want to remain “perpetual”
hahaha

or another funny thing …
a similar mistake does it windows …
I have a local keyboard and I have two languages set, the local and the English one … and sometimes Windows decides alone to set the English one without anyone ordering it … and when I find myself writing I find myself writing with wrong characters and what you do not know how pisses me off :joy:

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Huh. Yes, I guess I was. I feel like I’m living in the Twilight Zone now…

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I too would like to get a solution for this. This new “improvement” is just something I didn’t ask for.

If you’re already in global, why can’t the user define a secondary one, rather than having Z twice = nothing?

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This is funny… someone else but me who misremembered that this was a feature. I know the name for this now. It’s called the Mandela Effect.

Let’s hope the developers corrects this Ux shortcoming in the future.

I meant the thing Antaioz said about an option to switch it back to the old system, where the default transform axis was Global, no matter which one you set it to, and a second press of an axis would change it to the set one, a third press turns it off, and so on.

2.79 transform= Freeform -> Global -> “your selected transform axis” -> Freeform.
2.80 transform= Freeform -> “your selected transform axis” -> Global -> Freeform.

So an option to switch between those two. I think you two were talking about slightly differently behaving functions. The cycling through every transform axis wasn’t a thing. I think Antaioz just didn’t specify in his initial comment that it never was a thing (or at least wasn’t in 2.79) and talked about his own frustration, the one I’m also experiencing. Or did I misunderstand you? In any case, there might even be a more suitable thread for this problem. If so, I couldn’t find it.

@DonkyKongSeitan
Wow that’s awful, I think I’m misremembering too.
No, what I want is that in global, I can set a secondary other than the selected one (global). Even if it’s set in preferences. I absolutely don’t want to select normal and then have to press twice, that’s stupid.

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I’m also really missing the old flow. I’d be very happy to be able to toggle back to the 2.7x way, or perhaps better, define primary and secondary xform axis.

I would like to build an option to either revert or set primary/secondary axis. Can somebody point me to the source files where this operation is handled?

Thanks