> is relatively easy to use with just a trackpad
The last time I tried Blender - which admittedly is a while - it was practically unusable with a trackpad. Has this changed?
The last time I tried Blender - which admittedly is a while - it was practically unusable with a trackpad. Has this changed?
With Blender, it's not only a matter of learning the key combos, but it even has on-screen controls by default so you can at least use that. Maya used to have something similar, but they pretty much got rid of it. It's possible to configure Maya to make it easier to use with a trackpad, but the configuration for doing so is horribly obtuse and messes with mouse usage.
There's also an official Pie Menus add-on that lets you fit more controls in a smaller laptop keyboard. Numpad is the normal way to switch between view directions, but having them in a radial menu keeps it reasonably usable.
Lack of middle-mouse drag could be awkward and I don't know the solution off the top of my head, but I imagine there's something. You need to have both pan and zoom, I'd guess one is via two-finger scrolling and the other adds a modifier key?
https://blendermarket.com/products/pie-menu-editor
Alias (and now Autodesk) has been abusing the patent system and spreading FUD about marking/pie/radial menus being patented for decades, which inhibited 3dsmax and Blender from supporting them for many years. But now Blender has excellent support for pie menus, and they're not encumbered by patents.
Autodesk Advertisement About “Patented Marking Menus”:
https://miro.medium.com/max/534/1*3C79dFnlhN__OJ3XmEjN9A.png
http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/aliasdesign10_detail_b...
Pie Menu FUD and Misconceptions: Dispelling the fear, uncertainty, doubt and misconceptions about pie menus.
https://donhopkins.medium.com/pie-menu-fud-and-misconception...
>The Alias Marking Menu Patent Discouraged the Open Source Blender Community from Using Pie Menus for Decades
>Here is another example that of how that long term marketing FUD succeeded in holding back progress: the Blender community was discussing when the marking menu patent would expire, in anticipation of when they might finally be able to use marking menus in blender (even though it has always been fine to use pie menus).
>As the following discussion shows, there is a lot of purposefully sewn confusion and misunderstanding about the difference between marking menus and pie menus, and what exactly is patented, because of the inconsistent and inaccurate definitions and mistakes in the papers and patents and Alias’s marketing FUD:
https://blenderartists.org/t/when-will-marking-menu-patent-e...
>"Hi. In a recently closed topic regarding pie menus, LiquidApe said that marking menus are a patent of Autodesk, a patent that would expire shortly. The question is: When ? When could marking menus be usable in Blender ? I couldn’t find any info on internet, mabie some of you know."