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How to move only one of two nearby things on the same layer?

RavenWorks
Protege
This is a bit of a hard to state question, but this tweet demonstrates what I mean: https://twitter.com/chriswade__/status/878547342231732225

If I've got one shape with two (or more) things branching off of it right next to each other (say, fingers of a hand), and I want to use the Move tool to bend one but not the other, is there any way to do that?

The only solution I've found is to cut the thing I'm moving onto its own layer then merge it back in afterwards, but that always leaves a seam that I have to buff out with the Smooth tool, so it's not exactly ideal... plus, it would be nice if it could have SOME influence on the matter they meet at, rather than it being a purely hard seam you'd have to adjust separately on 'all layers' mode.

Basically, I'd settle for the answer to any of the following questions:
  • is there any way to 'paint' a soft selection (or even a hard selection) that will keep tools like the Move tool from taking effect outside of the area you've specified?
  • Is something like Maya's "surface falloff" possible for the Medium team to implement in a distance field?
  • Is there a way to make the Move tool's selection sphere take a shape OTHER than a sphere?
Or, as generally as possible: how do you bend one (entire) finger without disturbing the fingers next to it?
1 REPLY 1

nosferalatu
Protege
Those are great questions!

> is there any way to 'paint' a soft selection (or even a hard selection) that will keep tools like the Move tool from
> taking effect outside of the area you've specified?

The Move Tool currently works only as a sphere shape, and it doesn't have surface falloff, so unfortunately the answer is currently no. However, being able to paint a selection/falloff is definitely something we are looking at supporting. We wanted to put the Move Tool in everyone's hands first, and then perfect it.

> Is something like Maya's "surface falloff" possible for the Medium team to implement in a distance field?

It's possible, yes. We already have some code that takes a voxel in the distance field and crawls along the surface to neighboring voxels (the Smooth Tool uses this, for example) and then only smooths that area. For Move, there's more work we'd need to do on top of that to give you the ability to select or paint areas.

> Is there a way to make the Move tool's selection sphere take a shape OTHER than a sphere?

It's only a sphere at the moment. We could add some other basic shapes, but it's probably more powerful to develop the ability to paint selection/falloff.

I don't have a great answer for how best to work around this at the moment. Cutting/moving/merging/smooth is one way, but maybe some other people have found something clever?