Torque Mission Editor Snapping Tool...

Download Code File

Howdy! After posting my first blog I'm now ready to post my first resource. The idea of this resource has been bopping around in my head ever since I bought Torque and found the technique for add objects to the scene to be rather difficult. I don't know about you, but trying to figure out how to orient my camera right so as to add the object the way I want to took a lot of time to even begin to master. So, when I decided to get back into Torque a couple days ago, I decided to take care of that problem. INTRODUCING: Object snapping!!

What does it do, you ask? Well, when you open the creator tree and click on the object you want to add (a snowy tree), instead of immediately dropping it into the scene, it goes into "object add mode." This clears the editor out of your way for a better view, and adds a temporary [snowy tree] object which is projected onto the terrain or interior at which your mouse is pointing. When you have it in the right spot, left-click to create a "hard" copy--point and click. Now, instead of going back to the editor, it remains in add mode and creates a new temporary object of the same type: allowing you to point, click, and add it to your scene[multiple snowy trees]. So, actually, the process is more like: point-click, point-click...until you're done adding the object. Once you're done, right click and the editor will reappear exactly as it was before, allowing you to select another object (perhaps a green tree) to add or do whatever. This alone is a valuable capability as it allows you to quickly add objects to your scene by skipping the "move camera-drop object-re-orient object-move camera-drop object--...." pipeline altogether. Again, click-click...and you're done.

Now that might be great, but it's not all. Not only does it place the object at the projected positoin, but it also orients the objects according to the surface normals!!! So, no need to re-orient trees on sloped terrain, just point and...well...click!! It also does the same for interiors so adding objects to the walls becomes a cinch!! All you have to do is point and...oh, never mind. As you can tell, I'm really excited about it. It's made creating scenes in Torque that much easier for me.

To top it all off, it allows you to rotate your object along its relative z and y axis and adjust its height relative to the surface. This gives you almost complete control of the object's placement without having to exit adding mode and/or adjust the object using the axis gizmo.

Just so you know, this tool does not replace the original adding modes--it merely adds to them. Once integrated, it creates two new menu items in the "dropping object" section:

1) "Drop to cursor(Snap)": activates the tool
and
2) "Snap uses surface normals": allows you to toggle the object-to-surface normal orientation.

As the code is kind of long, I'm not going to post all the changes. However, the installation and using guide is included with the download.

Belows is a screenshot of a little scene I made using the tool, limiting myself to the following conditions:

1) all objects must be added WITHOUT changing the camera orientation

2) all objects must remain as they were placed: NO use of axis gizmos

The screenshot was made without changing the camera's orientation from that used to add the objects. Observe the power of point and click!!



Enjoy!!

P.S. Although the code was mine, I had some mathematic questions and a source question answered by:

James Ford and Gary"ChunkyKs." Special thanks goes to them.