lead in Radial Menu

I just watched a start of a Maya tutorial in modeling a robot, basically i was hoping to get a link to the robot image that I could bring into VW to practice with the programme.

I noticed in the tutorial that Maya has a radial menu, and when the instructor brought up the Radial Menu and selected an item, there was a small line that went from the  centre where the cursor was to the menu item he selected, I thought that would be a good addition in VW to help guide us to the right selection.

So that is my feature request.

And I still didn't get the damned robot image

took a screenshot for you to illustrate the point.

Yeah, that's what I saw,         thought it would be a nice addition to VW

an other feature of that in maya is that it shows you how far your into a multi-level radial menu also.



as you can see im too levels in and if i move back to the original dot it will bring that menu back up.

that is cool, very handy.

Hey guys, I'm all for improving on the Radial Menu too.  In my opinion I think Istonia should ditch the radial system altogether and go for Marking Menus.

I made a post about this way back on page 17 from the Polycount Boards

I really think when Istonia has time he should look at This page about Marking Menus instead.  They are so much more intuitive and faster to use than Radial menus.

p.s. I don't think Alias..er...Autodesk own the patent for them anymore.


edit: you had quotes in your links stopping them from working so i fixed that.

arent marking menus and radial menus the same thing, though, just that the marking menus have the line, and navigation between multiple levels moves across the screen and can be traced back.

like when i know where things are on the marking/radial menu , i hit the menu item with a flick of hte wrist in both maya or vw, so i would say there the same thing, just hte maya version makes it easier to nav with the line.

but both ways i want this in VW both the line and the way of navigating , multi level menus.

should i make a vid for the multi-level nav or the screen is fine to display what it does?

Hey passerby, Marking menus seem to be identical to radial menus at 1st but there are some fundamental differences.
The article I pointed to probably explains it a bit better than I ever could but here's my take on it.

'The most important point being that targeting a menu item isn't based on distance it's the path that you take to get there. It's scale-independent so you don't need pinpoint accuracy to get the result you're after.'

'Also.. you don't need to wait for the menu item to pop-up and as soon as you understand that the marking menu system becomes blindingly fast. Marking menus are really a gestural system and they have to be used to be fully appreciated.'

It becomes apparent as soon as you use them.  Marking Menus at 1st seem cumbersome and awkward but if you follow the rules they are just so much faster than Radial Menus

the Gesture recognition essentially means that it scales with your mouse movements.  So you can make the same pattern tiny or very large on the screen and the result will be the same.  So no more need for pinpoint accuracy.  Even with 3 or 4 sub menu layers deep.

play around with the vw one a bit for 1 level menus it is scale independent and you can be pretty sloppy and still hit the right one, main difference i see is multi level menus can be activated in a gesture, and the visuals used.

The selection of a item seems based on the angle of where the cursor is relative to where the menu is, so the hot area for each item extends across the whole screen and is quite large.

I know this is a bit of an old thread, but...

I despise radial menus with a passion.  They're great if you're just starting out in 3D, but I've been doing this stuff for 20 years or so and for me they're mostly useless.  They looked really cool in 2000 for Maya on an SGI machine, but really they're more eye candy than productivity boosters.

The current trend in software like Nuke, Fusion, and Softimage (with an addon) is quick searches.  You hit the TAB key, a window pops up & you type the tool you wanted.

Otherwise, right click should simply bring up a single menu with the options for what you currently have selected.  So if you have an edge selected, right clicking might give you "select loop, select ring, bevel, etc..."   

If the radial menu has to stay, why not attach it to the space bar rather than right click? 

I've just grown very accustomed to being able to pop up a search window, type 1 or 2 letters, and get the tool I wanted.

-Paul

the radial/marking menu i find quite powerfull actully as long as you have more than one of them, instead of doing 1 huge multi-level one like VW defaults too, i got a few of them.

shift+lmb for tools, control+lmb for selection tools, and control+shift+lmb for commands, with various others attached to just key combos.

i wish there were more responsive in VW though, and i wish they didn't always come up, in Maya if you do things quick enough it just runs the command instead of showing the menu, such as if i did something shift+lmb and drag right all in one motion it will do a vertex chamfer with out even showing the menu, the idea is over time raidal menus become more like mouse gestures, as you build muscle memory.

also if you despise them so much just disable them all, the can all be un bound in the radial menu editor, or the tools editor, so you could remove or attach to space bar like you suggested.

and they are context sensitive in VW and maya, so there content does changes depending on the sub-component selection type, and if there is a current selection or not.

i think your search pop-up thing should be a separate feature request, and not used to get rid of radial menus, just make your own topic for it and maybe give exmepls of it from other apps such as Houdini, SoftImage, and Blender.

The current trend in software like Nuke, Fusion, and Softimage (with an addon) is quick searches.  You hit the TAB key, a window pops up & you type the tool you wanted.


-Paul

Hi Paul, what is the name of search tool addon for Sofitmage? Is it your custom plugin?