Hi guys! Thanks for producing PlayCanvas, it’s one of the best apps I’ve ever used. For real! Powerful & easy for beginners, unlike many 3d apps. The fact that it runs in browsers is a massive plus.
I have a few suggestions that would make the tool even better:
Collisions: when making a new collision, it should take extents from the dimensions of the parent entity… since this is what the user will probably set it to 95% of the time
Multi-select: it would be very useful to be able to select more than one element and apply changes to all of them. For example if I want to select 20 entities and change the material being used on them, then a multi-select feature would save a lot of time.
Negatives: there should be an option to intersect elements with one or more ‘negative’ entities. For example if I place a wall I would like to place a window as another negative box inside it instead of manually creating 4 boxes around the window cavity.
Quick Rotate: when rotating boxes by 90 degrees, it would be great instead to have a button that swaps the X and Y co-ordinates so the original frame of reference is preserved.
Scale: the user could set their scale (e.g. 1 unit = 1 metre) and set snaps based on that. So when I’m working at a high level it’s set to 1 metre snap, but then fine work uses 10cm or even 1cm. Models could then specify their size in metric units too.
Rounding: a lot of the time after making some changes you end up with 0.49999 or similar. It would be good to have an option that specifies the number of decimals that are used, and make it configurable at different times during editing.
Marketplace: there should be an option to package up our own models and sell or share them on the market (unless it’s already there and I missed it?).
Fantastic feedback there, Andrew. Thanks for taking the time to jot down your thoughts for us.
Some responses from me:
Collisions: There might be something we can do here. I’m not convinced about expanding the collision component to encompass any sibling model component (most of my scenes have them on separate entities), but I do think that the collision component could maybe be affected by the entity’s scale. This avoids having to edit both the scale and half extents of a box model with box collision, say.
Multi-select: I have good news. This is scheduled to be worked on 4-8 weeks from now. So, in the scheme of things, not too long to wait.
Negatives: I call this CSG (or constructive solid geometry). This is a common feature of modelling applications like Blender, Max and Maya. However, PlayCanvas really isn’t a 3D modelling app. The primitives are for basic prototyping and we’d expect users to import more complex models (like buildings, say) from the modelling apps that I mention. There’s lots of free 3D content out there too. As long as it’s FBX (or OBJ, DAE or 3DS), you can simply drag it into Designer’s 3D view to upload and create it in your scene.
Quick Rotate: I would probably just type a value into the Attribute Editor to do this. But we’ll consider it.
Scale: Have you found the snap functionality in the Designer Settings panel? ‘View’ menu -> ‘Show Designer Settings’. As you say, current scale is 1 unit = 1 meter. We’ve thought about making this configurable. I’ll add a formal feature request to our database on this.
