Add 3-axis gizmo movement to Path3D points

[nonunknown]

Describe the project you are working on:

A 3D Platformer

Describe the problem or limitation you are having in your project:
Working with Paths, For example if I want to move a point only in X Axis, or Y Axis, I simply can't even if I could adding a 3Axis Gizmo would really help

Describe the feature / enhancement and how it helps to overcome the problem or limitation:
The solution is adding 3Axis Gizmo like you do for moving Spatial Nodes!

Describe how your proposal will work, with code, pseudocode, mockups, and/or diagrams:
Before:

After:

If this enhancement will not be used often, can it be worked around with a few lines of script?:
I think its possible to create a plugin that lets you do that, but in my vision this really needs to be core feature!

Is there a reason why this should be core and not an add-on in the asset library?:
Basic Functionality

[RobAley]

I support this proposal, moving path nodes is currently too error prone when you only want to go in one direction. I think the

Related, it would also be helpful if the colour of the in/out control handles (I think that's what they're called, the extra two handles you get per point when you shift-click and drag it) could be a different color to the point location handle itself. In a path with many points it's hard to tell which handles are which. Either that, or a line joining them to the main point position handle. The 3 Axis handle proposed above would presumably be also added to these two control handles as well?

[nonunknown]

I support this proposal, moving path nodes is currently too error prone when you only want to go in one direction. I think the

Related, it would also be helpful if the colour of the in/out control handles (I think that's what they're called, the extra two handles you get per point when you shift-click and drag it) could be a different color to the point location handle itself. In a path with many points it's hard to tell which handles are which. Either that, or a line joining them to the main point position handle. The 3 Axis handle proposed above would presumably be also added to these two control handles as well?
I didnt understood well, can you use a image?

[RobAley]

I've realised I was slightly wrong, there are already lines, they just can't always be seen.

So, in the path pictured below, I have shift-clicked on the middle point and dragged outwards, this adds two new handles (joined with a feint grey line to the point) which control the in/out curve to that point :

As you can see, both additional handles are the same colour as the original point handle (a kind of red/pink). Now, in my app, I'm using a CSGPolygon with pathfollow to attach a roadway to the path :

As you can see, the grey lines that join the in/out control handles to the main point handles are no longer visible (which is why I initially stated it would be nice to have lines!), and all of the handles are the same colour. So at a glance, it's hard to see which handle is which, and I frequently adjust the wrong one. So it would be nice if the handles were different colours, and perhaps the grey lines had a thin outline so they could be seen against a grey background.

But to relate it back to your proposal, it would be good if these additional in/out handles also had the 3axis gizmos on as well.

[Muzz]

Adding further wishes for this. Both drawing debug lines ontop of geometry and the 3 axis.

Also adding the ability to affect the line tilt in editor would be good. It's already a feature of bezier curves, but it isn't exposed.

This would let beziers be a much more complete solution to in game content creation.

[rcorre]

A few thoughts:

• There may be some synergy between this and Add Blender-inspired UI and shortcuts for transform tools in 3D editor #1215. It would be nice if you could grab a handle, then press X/Y/Z to constrain the translation to an axis.
• Another approach that would solve some use cases is enabling export of paths from Blender. I still think Godot would benefit from a better gizmo here.

And two additional requests, which may or may not belong in a separate issue:

• A "snap to floor" setting for translating path points. I'm guessing most uses of paths in games follow the terrain?
• Closed loop editing. When you click "close loop" while editing a path, it adds a final point in the same position as the first point. This is fine until you try to edit that point and end up breaking your loop.

[nonunknown]

@rcorre Nice additions, Fully agree with you!!!

[Calinou]

Closed loop editing. When you click "close loop" while editing a path, it adds a final point in the same position as the first point. This is fine until you try to edit that point and end up breaking your loop.

I guess this requires adding a closed property to Path3D? We'll also want to do the same in 2D for consistency.

[balloonpopper]

I'd like to see numerical fields for precise editing of the values for both the points and the handles. It would remove a lot of tedious minor edits that are required to try and get placement and orientation exactly how you want it. I've been trying to create a path that follows a curve around exactly 90 degrees - no matter what I do to the last point I can't get the rotation to come out at 90 degrees to the starting point and have to script in a correction that wouldn't be necessary if precise editing was possible.

[rcorre]

godotengine/godot-blender-exporter#380 is merged. It is now possible to export bezier curves from blender using godot-blender-exporter.

[Zireael07]

One more thing that path3D needs, apart from visual tweaks to the gizmo and a snap to collider option, would be axis constraints which would prevent placing the point in the wrong position in the first place. The Waterways addon has managed to implement those: https://github.com/Arnklit/Waterways/blob/main/addons/waterways/water_helper_methods.gd

[fire]

As godotengine/godot#50748 subgizmos was merged, Godot Engine 4 has all the things needed to add this.

[TheDuckCow]

Agree with much of this thread. @balloonpopper I was so frustrated with working with curves, I ended up making a plugin to get that precise editing panel (demo here; will reply back to that twitter thread once I release source code for it). I think this is a quite critical functionality to have in core.

Something else to add to this conversation, and pairs with this idea of a precise editing xyz box, is a concept of an "active point". Similar to how there is an active object, it would be nice if we could click into a curve to edit and select points. This way, gizmos could be added only to one point at a time (having gizmos appear on all points all the time would be a lot of visual overload), plus it also allows for a concept of selecting in and out handles in addition to the position point. I realize that introduces an entire other editing state which is a layer on top of what is there today, but maybe something like a tracker for the last interacted with point just ends up setting some reference index variable?

[Hiiamwilliam]

It is not Wednesday my dudes, and I did a thing (for Godot 3). My addon CustomPathGizmo is now live on the Asset Store! It has several features from this thread:

• Three axis translation gizmo for curve points and in/out handles
• The lines should be visible across geometry. I think.
• Ability to set tilt in editor (in degrees, which gets converted to radians)
• Snap to collider (from camera perspective)
• Closed loop editing. Now there's also a button to open loop
• Prints points position on double click (#3853)
• Uses the concept of "active point" (handles only show for the last selected curve point)

A small difference is that translations snap to 0.1 by default. I don't know how to read from the Transform > Configure Snap, so I had to assume a small value. The addon technically could be made to work withou snap, but this will require a refactoring I'm not going to do since I had plans to use this addon with another addon.

Should mostly work fine, but do report bugs if you find any.

no matter what I do to the last point I can't get the rotation to come out at 90 degrees

Yeah I think there's something wrong as well. Setting tilt to X degrees does not rotate an object following a PathFollow exactly X degrees. It gets close enough, but not exactly there. This addon doesn't solve that.

[fire]

Is there interest in me porting this to be in core Godot Engine?

Edited: It may already be implemented.

Curve3D.Screen.Recording.2023-11-06.at.9.45.04.AM.mov

[Muzz]

@fire That's a huge improvement, i'd love to see it in.

[fire]

The latest Godot Engine 4.2 builds should have this better 3-axis gizmo for paths.

[Calinou]

What @fire is showing isn't 3-axis gizmo movement (see OP for what's expected), it's tilt handles. This proposal is still not implemented as of 4.2.

[FabriceCastel]

Hey y'all. This is a HUGE paint point for me in my current project, and I can't really wait around until this makes its way to core so I wrote up a very, very rough plugin to help work around this issue here: https://github.com/FabriceCastel/better-path3d-gizmos

It does just enough to get the job done for me. I'm not planning on doing any fixes/improvements/etc to this plugin, but if anyone wants to push that I don't mind going over pull requests or letting anyone just take what I've got and build something better on top.

Hope this helps.

[fire]

@FabriceCastel Would you be ok if I ported it to c++ core?

[FabriceCastel]

Yeah sure thing @fire 👍