13 Feature Requests

[Zirnworks]

I have been using Gravity Sketch for double digit hours, long enough to see its potential. It is my favorite VR creation app so far - and the first experience that feels more like a tool for serious artists rather than a toy. But I would have difficulty integrating it into my design pipeline without these features/fixes. (I'm on a Vive, if that makes any difference.) I intend to use it primarily for conceptual architecture design.

High priority feature requests:

• 1. Duplicate an object without moving the original. This can be especially annoying when stacking large flat shapes, as the tiniest movement makes a big difference and it's impossible to "fix" again.
  
• 2. Constrain object movement/duplication along an axis. (An incomplete workaround is to enable the grid, but the grid constrains vertical movement as well.)
  
• 3. Rotate object along a plane. (Enabling the grid technically allows this, but the possible rotation angles are severely limited.) Being able to rotate the shape tool around its local axis would be great.

All 3 of those would be so helpful to me when I do architecture sketching, as my workflow is often to sketch out floor shapes/layouts first, then complete the outside of the building. I've had difficulty keeping them parallel to the ground plane as soon as I try to move/duplicate them. Its pretty frustrating when they are thin planes as it can immediately restrict design and kill subtlety.

More high priority ones:

• 4. Flip selected objects along X, Y, or Z (duplicate or not). This would be huge for me.
  
• 5. "Close" shapes drawn with the stroke tool so that the surface mesh is continuous.
  
• 6. Better rotation control for straight line stroke tool. When using this with a flattened cross section, it is very jittery/erratic, feeling almost random. Frustrating, especially in contrast to how Tilt Brush's straight line tool works: the rotational angle of a stroke during its straight line creation is very precise and fun to work with.
  
• 7. Completely flat brush option (basically, just drawing an extruded plane rather than a squished oval) for stroke/ink tools.
  
• 8. Ability to export the spline data of strokes. Currently when I export an .iges, none of the stroke shapes come into my destination software. Only lathes, surfaces, primitives. I would love to be able to add my own lofts to splines created in Gravity Sketch.

Lower priority for me but would still be awesome:

• 9. Move selected objects to a new layer. Many times I've wished I could do this as my design increases in complexity, so that I can lock objects that are getting in the way of selecting what I need to. (An alternative would be the ability to temporarily freeze selected objects so they can't be selected.)
  
• 10. Text callout functionality (I'd be happy with just text-as-geometry, which would open up some cool artistic possibilities on their own). I am a pretty verbal designer, and ability to easily record my functionality ideas/labels as words would be amazing.
  
• 11. Ability to bend the axis of a lathed object after its been drawn.
  
• 12. Adjust the contour of a lathe without changing its center point.
  
• 13. A rotate snap tool. Similar to the universal grid... with options like 5 degree, 15 degree, 45 degree intervals.

If any of these are unclear, I'd be happy to sketch out an illustration. Many thanks for reading. I would love to use Gravity Sketch as a cornerstone design tool, and having even some of these would push it into that territory for me, especially to better justify the premium price of Pro.

[danny boy]

Thanks for this comprehensive feature request list!

I encourage you to check through the user guide and see if you pick up any tips.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1M5Kt6qRMP_o-WOYwJkXifdAiedBv-E1B7zHw2T91GBA/edit#slide=id.g2d1b26405f_0_5

The good news is: some of these are already possible in the app today:

1. There are three ways to achieve this:
- Grab the object and hit duplicate quickly afterwards. This is a bit awkward but will snap the object to its original position
- Grab the object and make copies of it, when you are done, if you pull the left trigger it will "cancel" the grab, and place the object back where it started.
- At the main menu (where you save and load) enable return after duplicate. This will return the object to it's original position after you finish making copies of it (similar to the above steps, but automatic)

2. Smart Move is currently the best way to do this. Check topic 13 of the user guide

3. Smart move is also a way to achieve this

5. When in control point edit mode, you can switch on "Loop" to close the stroke

7. Wouldn't the square brush with minimum thickness do this?

9. Grab the object and drop it into the blue box on the side of the layer. This will add the object to that layer

It would be great if you could try some of these suggestions and come back with any feedback on if they help or don't help for you.

The other suggestions are very clear and reasonable, and we will pass this around the team!

The current version of Gravity Sketch has clearly had a lot of focus on flowing surfaces and smooth design. We are currently working towards something that services architecture and more precise/measured design, and hope to deliver improvements soon!

[Zirnworks]

Many thanks for the rapid and helpful reply.

Also thanks for the user guide. I did pick up a couple pointers from it. Overall, Gravity Sketch is pretty intuitive, but definitely a good supplement to have.

1. Ah, I was not hitting the trigger button quickly enough. I was able to find "return after duplicate" in the main menu (though I find it odd that there are redundant options in that menu vs. the regular "settings" menu. Also, is it possible to access that menu without closing the app and reopening it again?

2. Smart Move worked well for getting my floors duplicated along the vertical axis. Exactly what I needed.

However, moving objects freely along the horizontal plane proved to be trickier though. I could align my controllers such that a grey line (rather than green) stuck out as the move axis. However, I could never get this line to be parallel to the ground, it would always end up being cockeyed, floating my duplicates into the air. The only time I could get it to snap to the horizontal plane was when it was aligning with a particular axis.
So my feature request for this scenario would be a checkbox for "constrain movement to XY plane, XZ plane, or YZ plane." It would be a lot less timetaking/cumbersome than trying to align the controllers this way.

3. While I was technically able to get this to work, I had a lot of trouble controlling the rotation. It was jumpy and erratic, moving quickly and seemingly randomly. The controls seem like they could be better in this regard. I still haven't figured out how to properly control it.

5. Works well, dunno how I missed that one!

7. It does not appear to be working for me. I did a test where I set the brush to the furthest corners, and exported the result. It still has a noticeable thickness. https://i.imgur.com/1jbTMtt.png The objective is to have a single sided plane with 1/4 the polycount (for use as assets in an abstract VR game I'm helping develop, where polycount needs to be an absolute minimum).

9. Works well! Thanks.

---

While trying these out, I remembered two other feature requests I had:

14. Ability to resize an object without rotating it! (a big one)

15. Additive selection. (The equivalent of holding down "ctrl" or "shift" when selecting in most 3D software.) There have been many scenarios where selecting with a sphere is too crude and either selects unwanted objects or doesn't select enough of them, so the ability to add objects to selection without unselecting the previous ones would be great. I have a workaround now that I can move objects into a new layer piece by piece, but additive/paint-style selection would be a much faster and more elegant way to do it!



I eagerly await the future updates. And am glad you guys put a lot of effort into the smooth surfaces/design stuff. Working with splines/surfaces that curved in >1 dimensions was always really annoying for in traditional 3D apps, definitely a big selling point of Gravity Sketch for me.

[metapharsical]

+1 for all these features!
I would definitely subscribe to Pro License for these:

• Additive Select. (pretty please, work it into next update, I need it now)
  
• .iges Output of Spline Data for Strokes, or in-GSVR Loft & Extrude along strokes (very needed)
  
• Constrain Translation to any 2D plane

And just to put my idea in again... The Developers could save a lot of effort implementing these controls into the UI if they simply expose keyboard hotkeys which us VIVE users can trigger with keywords using our built-in microphone (along with inexpensive 3rd party voice recognition software widely available). Dont get me wrong, the Smart Move gesture gizmo is a great use of the motion controller interface and well done!

Planar Movement Snapping, for example, you could give us 4 hotkeys - F5,F6,F7,F8

• F5 restricts movement/scaling to XZ plane. User would set 3rd party software to trigger F5 key by speaking "snap to floor"
  
• F6 restricts to XY plane. Trigger by speaking "snap to front"
  
• F7 restricts to ZY plane. "snap to side"
  
• F8 restricts to any arbitrary plane controlled by non-tool hand. Bonus point: enable snapping to an angle (15deg,45deg) when placing Plane with an additional hotkey F9