Transform Inspection in the Vortex Editor

This week I finished implementing the Transform Panel of the properties view. This is a huge step towards providing a WYSIWYG interface to the Vortex Engine!

This work encompassed being able to select any entity and inspect its properties, namely, its position, rotation and scale.

As I described in my previous post, I reworked the way entities store their transforms in order to be able to keep properties separate, only combining them for rendering purposes. Moving entities to the new Transform construct was simpler that I had anticipated, as entities encapsulate and manage the scenegraph nodes that the Vortex renderers expect.

The next step now in the Properties Panel saga is to add editing capabilities to the UI, so that modifying the values presented in the transform will alter the entities in the 3D world.

The only major issue that I see here is that, as I start to add more editing capabilities to the UI, it becomes ever more pressing to start implementing the undo/redo stack. It will be necessary as the Editor becomes more powerful.

This begs the question of the stack commands going through a centralized front controller, as opposed to having each UI component modify entities on its own. Now, a centralized component for actions must be carefully designed, as it can also provide the native backend for an (eventual) engine scripting system – something I’ve also started to research, but that requires a post on its own : )

The plan for this week is then: add “write” capabilities to the properties panel and start implementing the undo/redo stack. Stay tuned for more!