You can put an arithmetic expression in a parameter field! (and other little tips maybe)

Snuggins

I'm using most recent beta 4.12.1.40

The tip in the subject is all I got for now, but was so amazed when it happened I had to write in. Especially because Daz number entry is usually a bad experience**

The Story Behind the Story: There I was, having zeroed out a parent's Y translation since when creating a new group around existing stuff, Daz likes to change the transform of the parent and all the children. I assume it is doing a center of gravity calculation or something, but it bothers my sense of neatness so I can say goodbye to the next 20 minutes. I have to then zero out everything in the parent transform, and remember to subtract or add back anything I've changed so nothing moves. So I find myself, subtracting, say, 0.74332 from the Y translation of all the child props & figures in the new group.  I usually use a calculator to do this. For fun I thought, call me crazy, but maybe it will do it for me, so I entered  "- 0.74332" into the parameters tab text field for Y translation,  and it subtracted that amount, so it worked! After that I tried multiplying by 2 ("* 2")  which worked too! I didn't do much beyond that, so I don't know the limits of the parser, it is probably built into Qt or something, but thought it worth writing in about.

There are lots of little tips maybe others have and have been meaning to share? That's all for me for now though.

 

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** not to rant since this is about little tips that work, but...

  1) Have you ever tried to change the range in an animation in the new should-replace-graphMate lower window? It verifies that start <= end frame on every key press so if your range is 20 to 30 you can't change the end frame to 40 because when you type the "4" to begin typing 40,  the "4" is automatically changed to a "20" because it is enforcing the "start <= end" rule on every keypress before letting enough time elapse. That is it thinks you want the impossible range 20 to 4, when you in reality aren't done typing the 40. Try it.

  2) Or, the image series doesn't like the number 0, you have to type "1" when changing the start frame and then use the little arrow control to decrement by 1 to get 0

  3)  Probably related to (2), the image series range is often off by one, decreasing the end frame by one when you open a saved scene.

   I should file a bug report but found it frustrating last time I tried, being asked questions that seemed designed to discourage me from ever wanting to do it again, which worked.

GOOD THING: In 4.12 but maybe 4.11 since those were so close together it was crazy, the devs fixed the "render filename bug" where you had to delete from the end of the name to change it. Clicking to put insertion point in the middle of the name would just result in anything typed being added to the end. Who knew, these things the original Mac team solved in 1984 would pose such a challenge over 30 years later. But that fix was good.

maclean

Yep. +-/* all work when entered after the current value. It's been discussed in various threads before, and it's something I use all the time. It's just not a well-known feature.

dijitul

Another little tip I learned (since you mentioned the 20-minute wait when grouping/parenting things):

Parenting anything to a new NULL is pretty much instant.  Using a NULL as a parent to a character, for example, now allows you to set the "origin" of the character's rotation, scaling, translation, etc.  This is especially useful if you want to move, say, two characters and the room they're in all at once.  Parent all three objects to a NULL, adjust the NULL's rotation, scaling, translation, then unparent the objects.  Much faster.   It also helps when you need to rotate an object around a point which is not the objects origin/center.  Place the NULL at the desired point, parent the object(s), then adjust the NULL as needed.  I tend to use NULLs as a parent instead of Groups whenever possible.

 

Snuggins

dijitul_924f9a3316 said:

Another little tip I learned (since you mentioned the 20-minute wait when grouping/parenting things):

Parenting anything to a new NULL is pretty much instant.  Using a NULL as a parent to a character, for example, now allows you to set the "origin" of the character's rotation, scaling, translation, etc.  This is especially useful if you want to move, say, two characters and the room they're in all at once.  Parent all three objects to a NULL, adjust the NULL's rotation, scaling, translation, then unparent the objects.  Much faster.   It also helps when you need to rotate an object around a point which is not the objects origin/center.  Place the NULL at the desired point, parent the object(s), then adjust the NULL as needed.  I tend to use NULLs as a parent instead of Groups whenever possible.

 

Thanks dijitul, I make the mistake of not reading replies for awhile, appreciate the tip!

WsCG

Oh good to know! I use tricks like that in Illustrator or Corel Draw when I know I have to move something a distance, but can't do the math in my head. Very handy in that work. I'm sure it's even more so here.