laishi / blender-touchview

Touch Controls addon for Blender 2.9-3.4

Index

• Features
• Building from Github
• Installation
• Changelog

Features

This add-on is designed to improve the user experience of Blender for users without immediate access to a keyboard or mouse. It provides many customizable UI improvements to cater to your workflow needs.

Viewport Touch Control

Pan, Rotate, and Zoom the viewport with your finger.

The viewport has be updated to use 3 interactive "hot regions" to control the camera position.

If you are a pen tablet user; the pen will still draw, while your finger can be used to control the camera.

If your tablet doesn't support touch; you can set the middle mouse button to activate the control regions in the add-on settings.

• Pan by dragging for the middle of the viewport
• Zoom by dragging along the left or right edge of the viewport
• Rotate by dragging the remaining space in the viewport

Additional Details

Touch Controls come with a toggleable overlay which can be assigned colors.

It is recommended to disable the overlay once you are comfortable with the size of each touch region, or set the transparency very low. (note: the overlay will not be shown in the render output)

You may chose to switch the Pan and Rotate regions. If you lock the viewport rotation, Panning can be done anywhere between the Zoom control regions.

Customizable Double-tap Action

Double-tap to trigger one of the following actions:

• "Transfer Mode" to change the active object
• Toggle Touch Control
• Toggle Local View
• Toggle Full-screen Viewport

note: this feature only works by tapping your finger or clicking to prevent the pen from accidentally triggering it while drawing

Custom On-screen Buttons

Important features have been made available directly in the viewport. Each button can be toggled on/off from the overlay menu.

The following on-screen buttons are currently available:

• Undo/Redo
• Toggle Fullscreen Viewport
• Toggle Quad-view
• Recenter Viewport
• Change Rotation Center Point
• Toggle N-panel
• Toggle Viewport Rotation Lock
• Topology Control
• Sculpt Brush Dynamics

Additional Details

Toggle Quad-view

Quad-view may sometimes replace the perspective viewport with an orthographic viewport when toggled off and on. This may cause the main viewport rotation to be automatically locked. Simply unlock it with the on-screen button.

Recent Viewport

This attempts to bring the active object back into view. If the origin is misaligned, it may not work perfectly.

Viewport Rotation Lock

Locking the viewport rotation replaces viewport rotation with panning control.

NOTE: Quad-view will default to rotation locking for isometric viewports (top, front, and side views)

Topology Control

This feature provides quick access to Retopology control in Sculpt mode and is not shown in any other mode.

If the selected object has a Multi-resolution modifier; the retopology controls change to subdivision level controls.

Quickly jump through subdivision levels, subdivide and unsubdivide right from the viewport.

A yellow icon means the next subdivision step needs to be calculated. It will automatically try to subdivide/unsubdivide when clicked.

A red icon means you have reached your subdivision limit and it will not try to subdivide further. You may change the maximum subdivision levels available for the on-screen buttons to limit accidental subdivision.

note: the subdivision limit only applies to increasing subdivision levels. You may unsubdivide as much as Blender is able.

Sculpt Brush Dynamics

This feature allows you to quickly access the UI for brush resizing and strength control in sculpt mode.

Fully Customizable Floating Menu

This button allows you to assign up to 8 commands, unique to each edit mode (object, sculpt, texture paint, weight paint, etc) and reposition it where ever you want, to best fit your workspace. If you don't need it, simply disable it in the settings menu.

Feature Roadmap

If you have a suggestion for more features, please check if it's on this list before submitting a request on Github.

I'm continuing to look at features which could improve the experience of Blender without adding too much clutter to the UI.

Currently, I'm planning to add the following features:

• auto-retopology levels
• better 3D gizmos for edit mode
• control gizmo enum (flip through object gizmos in sculpt mode)

This list will change as I explore options and get more user feedback.

Building from Github

Building the addon zip can be done by using the included bundle.sh script. Simply run:

./bundle.sh

It will output the files to include and generate a new ZIP file:

$ ./bundle.sh
  adding: touchview/ (stored 0%)
  adding: touchview/lib/ (stored 0%)
  adding: touchview/lib/Gizmos.py (deflated 77%)
  adding: touchview/lib/items.py (deflated 68%)
  adding: touchview/lib/Operators.py (deflated 80%)
  adding: touchview/lib/Overlay.py (deflated 73%)
  adding: touchview/lib/Panel.py (deflated 69%)
  adding: touchview/lib/touch_input.py (deflated 69%)
  adding: touchview/lib/__init__.py (deflated 70%)
  adding: touchview/Settings.py (deflated 76%)
  adding: touchview/__init__.py (deflated 51%)

The final ZIP can be found in:

./bin/touchview.zip

Installation

In Blender, open Edit > Preferences....

Navigate to the Add-ons tab.

Click Install... and navigate to the touchview.zip file.

Select it and click Install Add-on.

note: You do not need to extract it, first. Simply install the ZIP, directly

Changelog

v2.6.0

• UPDATED : code spec now based on flake8
• UPDATED : added alternative action for TransferMode when used in OBJECT mode
• UPDATED : fixed desktop scaling issue with radial gizmo menu
• UPDATED : fixed toggle touch gizmo and RC/DC action
• UPDATED : fixed error message when rotation locked and pan/rotate swapped

v2.5.0

• ADDED : Gizmo size control
• UPDATED : moved operators into folder

v2.4.0

• UPDATED : preferences access simplified with utility function
• ADDED : single-input mode now activates large floating toggle button

v2.3.0

• ADDED : Input Mode selection (for devices with only touch or pen support)

v2.2.0

• ADDED : Toggle control gizmo (translate, rotate, scale, none)
• UPDATED : Added Brush dynamics (from sculpt mode) to paint modes
  • NOTE: some paint/sculpt modes when in 2D/Draw canvas mode aren't yet hooked up to brush dynamics

v2.1.0

• ADDED : Right Click Actions
• UPDATED : Preferences and N-Panel restructure

v2.0.0

• UPDATED : Gizmos-related code simplified and reorganized for easier management
• ADDED : floating gizmo bar and floating gizmo radial menu modes
• ADDED : customizable gizmo menu spacing
• UPDATED : viewport safe area calculation
• UPDATED : floating action menu to use same move/access functionality as floating radial menu
• ADDED : 8th custom action for floating action menu

v1.2.4

• ADDED : Toggle Double-tap action on/off

v1.2.3

• ADDED : Sculpt Brush Dynamics
• UPDATED : Viewport rotation in sculpt mode automatically sets pivot to mesh under touch point

v1.2.2

• UPDATED : Gizmo panel layout split

v1.2.1

• REMOVED : Middle Mouse keybind
• REMOVED : viewport rotation lock when using the Grease Pencil

v1.2.0

• BREAKING: This version requires previous version to be disabled before install
• UPDATED : Improved Pen detection and simplified key configs
• ADDED : Support for various 2D and 2D-like views (Image Editor, UV Editor, 2D Animation, Compositing, etc)

v1.1.2

• ADDED : Support for Node Editor

v1.1.1

• ADDED : minor fix to pen detection

v1.1.0

• ADDED : Independent toggle for entire gizmo bar
• ADDED : Customizable double-tap actions
• ADDED : Multi-resolution level limiter and gizmo status color

v1.0.1

• ADDED : Optional include for MIDDLEMOUSE when disabling/enabling touch controls
• FIXED : Preferences bug preventing toggle of floating Gizmo

v1.0.0

• ADDED : Toggle swap pan/rotate regions
• ADDED : Toggle floating menu button to N Panel
• UPDATED : Disabling touch controls no longer removes overlay (hot regions still work with custom keybinds and MIDDLEMOUSE)
• UPDATED : Disabling touch controls restores default LEFTMOUSE functionality

v0.9.6

• ADDED : undo/redo gizmo
• ADDED : overlay color selection
• ADDED : touch control toggle in settings
• ADDED : Alt+T to toggle touch controls
• UPDATED : N Panel now includes extra settings from addon menu
• UPDATED : Lock Rotation now addresses quadview data replication bug
• UPDATED : Limited floating gizmo to viewport area
• UPDATED : code cleanup and additional structure tweaks
• REMOVED : Gizmo Tooltips

v0.9.5

• ADDED : multires modifier support to gizmo bar (shows retopology tools when no modifier is present)
• FIXED : Gizmos now properly follow mode visibility rules
• FIXED : Double-tap selection now only runs in appropriate viewport modes

v0.9.4

• ADDED : Support for menus in floating gizmo
• ADDED : Mode-specific options for floating gizmo
• UPDATED : Dependence on active_object for mode detection
• UPDATED : Classes to follow Blender naming conventions
• UPDATED : Keymaps for touchview in all context
• UPDATED : Keymaps for context action assigned to pen

v0.9.3

• ADDED : Sculpt pivot mode gizmo
• ADDED : Customizable floating menu

v0.9.2

• FIXED : Issue delaying overlay viewport binding
• FIXED : Gizmo tools/panel overlap issue when "Region Overlap" enabled
• REMOVED : Viewport manager class
• REMOVED : Default keymap causing Move Operator to trigger when dragging over non-modal gizmos

v0.9.1

• ADDED : Tap for menu scroll

v0.9

• ADDED : N-Panel gizmo
• UPDATED : Code restructure
• FIXED : Dragging over gizmo moves selected object

v0.8

• ADDED : Gizmo to toggle fullscreen mode
• UPDATED : Settings to addon preferences to save across projects and scenes
• FIXED : Bugs impacting user experience
• FIXED : Doubletap now selects/activates tapped object instead of triggering fullscreen

v0.7

• ADDED : Gizmos for key features
• ADDED : Hide/show Gizmo and layout options
• ADDED : Locked viewport rotation for isometric viewports in quadview to address lock/unlock inconsistencies
• FIXED : Fullscreen Toggle no longer maximizes the window, only expands the View3D region

v0.6

• UPDATED : Scale of viewport overlay settings for more precision
• FIXED : Issues with determining locked state with quadviews

v0.5

• ADDED : Camera rotation lock in N-panel
• FIXED : Quad-view overlay compatibility
• FIXED : Rotation with panning when rotation is locked
• FIXED : Issue when locking view to Object or 3D Cursor

v0.4

• ADDED : Double-tap to toggle "focus" mode
• ADDED : Toggle Tools LEFT/RIGHT in UI

v0.3

• FIXED : Incorrect viewport calculation when N-panel is open
• FIXED : Refactored screen/area management code (additional major refactor needed)

v0.2

• FIXED : Minor bug fixes and code cleanup

v0.1

• ADDED : Camera dolly on left and right of viewport
• ADDED : Camera pan from center of viewport
• ADDED : Camera rotate in any other area of viewport
• ADDED : Toggleable overlay to simplify resizing controls

Issues

Please report any issues you find and I'll do my best to address them.

The add-on is free, but if it helps you, please consider supporting me.