Most often I edit SubD in Blender, and it has no issue extending movement beyond the borders of the control cage (you just hold down a modifier key) and that functionality is very useful.
Right now, I’ve resorted to drawing lines inside my SubD and extending those and then moving all the points up, but that’s very cumbersome!
(Also, for those of you who wants me to use an object aligned gumball, I need to move more than one point at the same time along their individual extensions. This was just a simple example that I recorded.)
(But since I’m interested in the UX of the tools I’m using, it begs the question as to why MoveUVN doesn’t fully work on SubD and why Slide doesn’t work on surfaces at all… budget reasons, I guess.)
This is an open feature request as https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-59546 but hasn’t been worked on yet. SubD surfaces don’t have U and V directions but the control points will have normal directions so that part works as you saw. A new tool like MoveUVN but for SubD instead of NURBS surfaces needs to be developed.
Slide is the best option in the meantime as mentioned.
NO! That’s the opposite of the point of making this thread!
You have two tools already. You only need to make them both work on either surface type on the backend. The end-user doesn’t care that technically a SubD doesn’t have UV, the UX is the same. You assign a UV direction on ToNurbs anyway, so just use the same for the MoveUVN tool.
@eobet Believe me, I know what you mean, I have been asking for MoveUVN support for SubD surfaces internally since the development began. A number of requests have been filed and each time it comes up again I add the forum links to these. I’ve done that again now and also added your last comment. You can also leave a comment on that public You Track issue if you like.
Just to reiterate, I know what you mean and have said the same before. If enough users comment on the existing requests it stands a better chance of being worked on sooner.
ToNURBS converts each face to a separate NURBS surface. An edge may be in the U direction of one adjacent surface and in the V direction of the other adjacent surface. That means it isn’t possible to just use the same for the MoveUVN tool.
Also a SubD control point mesh may have more than four lines at a control point. Presumably a tool analogous to MoveUVN would need to be able to move the control point along any of the lines.
Sorry @davidcockey, but you’re giving me a technical explanation to something I already gave a technical workaround for. Again, slide has along/across which is functionally equivalent to U/V. I don’t care how they solve it in the end, they just need to make it seamless. All that matters to the end-user is the UX.
The SubD surfaces have a very well defined control polygon which is the ideal reference for the MoveUVN tool to move control points along the control polygon (including towards the opposite direction of the end control polygon).
The outcome is part of the experience. Anytime Rhino produces an unexpected/poor outcome, I come here and post, and 90% of the time I get a technical explanation as to why, which I couldn’t care less about! Technical reasons are not part of the UX, but that’s what happens when a company is too small to not afford a dedicated UX person/team or don’t have a focus on it as a part of their culture (@BrianJ seems to be fighting the good fight, though).
Good UX doesn’t just make people use things more effectively, good UX saves time (and money) and great UX makes people want to use your thing more (it’s great marketing)!
Right - it cannot be ‘just’ MoveUVN… on surfaces there is no ambiguity about which control polygon segment to pay attention to - on SubD, that goes out the window as there is no U or V and no grid structure - so the nudging part would need some input about which way the user intends to move a point. I suspect a completely different UI is needed, more on-screen-interactive… my guess. Not being a SubDeist I am not up on how that is handled elsewhere…
