Editing Mode Requests

I understand Linden's train of thought for keeping all building and editng in-game, but these construction tools need a LOT of work.

I would really, REALLY, R_E_A_L_L_Y like to be able to Create and Edit objects in another window. Being stuck in the world, having my character visible, and having that blink selection ray shooting out of my hand is Insanely awkward and distracting. That blinking ray is one of THE most annoying aspects of modeling. It makes my freaking eyes bleed.

Building would be 1000X easier if I could pop the object into a construction window that allowed to view the model from the X, Y, Z views or Alt+ drag to zoom around it. If they're trying to keep everything user-friendly then I would suggest a UI like Bryce. Bryce (the shader lab excluded) was about as user-friendly as anything i've ever seen.

At least let me edit in Mouse Look. This current mode of editing is pretty rough and the work flow is agonizingly slow.

Herbert, while you can't edit in mouselook perse, you can do something even better, which is you can use alt, ctrl, and shift along with the left mouse button to control camera movement in a way that is very similar to how the perspective camera is controled in Maya, Max, and most other 3D modeling packages. Try this. Hold down alt, and then click and drag the mouse. You'll see that whatever you clicked on is now the focal point of the camera, and that moving the mouse left and right will rotate the camera around it, while moving the mouse up and down zooms in and out. Now hold down alt and ctrl and do the same thing. Then alt, ctrl, and shift. With these key combinations, the camera is easy to control.

As you can see, any camera angle can be acheived in a split second. Just hold the appropriate keys, click the left mouse button, and drag the mouse. You can move it around your objects constantly with complete freedom as you build, just like you would in any other 3D application. Here's how the controls break down.

Left mouse button plus:


If you're not used to the controls yet, don't worry about it. After a few days, they become second nature, and you don't even think about them anymore. You just think where you want to look, and before you know it, your hands are moving the camera straight there.

As for the orthographic views suggestion, yeah that would be great. Hopefully we'll have that one day. In the mean time, the SL camera behaves just like the perspective window camera in any other 3D app.

Moved to Feature Suggestions

I know I can Alt drag around, which is sometimes helpful but having to look at everything else in the game world (and that blinking ray!) is pretty painful.

The blinking ray - you mean the particles stream from your avatar to edited object? You can change the color of those particles in the preferences (General/Color for my effects) or turn off particles rendering completely under View menu/Beacons/Hide particles or something like that.

As for seeing other things around you - rez a prim, sit on it, go to edit mode, set its Z coordinate to 600, hit enter, resize to 10x10, unsit and voila - a platform in the the sky with very few things to look at.

Ahhh....much better. Thank You.

Unfortunately, that turns off ALL particles, which is particularly annoying when WORKING on particles! SL just needs an option to disable edit particles completely!