Having used Sweet Home 3D now for well over a month, and proceeding very well, i've noticed a few things that are missing that would make working with it a lot easier. As i've been working with SH3D, i jotted down different things that would have made my tasks more efficient, at least for no one but me. No real order here, and our esteemed author/programmer of SH3D can view these as passing butterflies that may tickle his fancy, which he may choose to capture and incorporate into his collection of wonderful features...
1. Custom fonts
I use more stylized fonts for my floor plans & would love to be able to choose something other than Arial for each text purpose.
2. Side or wall view
I would love to be able to make 2D creations/adjustments from a wall POV rather than just from top down. This would make it easier to view elevations and line up dissimilar objects visually. Perhaps if you could utilize a new window to line-draw a wall view from another camera similar to the "Virtual Visit" camera.
3. Highlight selected units in 3D view
I understand it's hard to change the program to select an element from the 3D view, but it would be helpful if, when selecting it from the 2D view, the element is somehow highlighted in the 3D view. It's not enough to just center it in the window, because often elements overlap (like walls from 2 different levels). Perhaps tinting it a custom color would be the easiest to see what overlapping element is selected.
4. Lock individual elements
It would be great to be able to lock pieces in place once i set them. Maybe a keypress when the item is selected would toggle the item's lock into place, making them uneditable or unmovable until unlocked. This would also make it easier to select objects in a room without selecting the room element itself.
5. Reset origin to plan
I often use a global focal point (such as the corner of two intersecting walls) to determine the exact coordinates of every building element i'm placing. Would like to be able to reset the entire space so that the grid origin is at a point of a chosen mouseclick or marker.
6. Sort Furniture list by more than one category
I would like to be able to sort the List View of the Furniture Library by more than one index, say, first by category, then by name or a given keyword. Could definitely use this in the Furniture Editor JAR too.
7. Customize mouse actions
I'm used to using different mouse actions when i assemble 3D models or drawings depending on the application. With SH3D, i'm constantly taking a step back because my brain is hardwired to use my mouse in different ways (such as right-click-and-dragging for moving the view and mousewheeling to zoom in-out). It would be great to able to choose how we want different mouse actions to affect the view or selection (left-click, right-click, or click-and-drag, for example). This might be an appropriate dialog...
Possible Mouse Action dialog window
8. Texture control
In my other 3D programs, texture alignment and sizing is crucial. This to me should be a basic feature for any application that does 3D modeling or assembly. I understand this will mean a whole new set of classes and methods for our beseiged programmer
9. Show mouse coordinates on floor plan
Would love to be able to see how my edits are going based on my mouse location, either in header field or preferably a tooltip. For example, when moving a wall PERPENDICULAR to its plane, i'd like to see how far from the original location i'm moving it. There are other obvious applications as well.
10. Alternate bkgd color for icons
Importing 3D models that don't have the attached skin or texture means the imported model will be white, making it hard to see in the icon tooltip. Would love either to be able to choose the import color or to change the background of the icon tooltip so we can more easily preview the model.
11. Option to draw lower floors in higher levels
I'm now making use of multiple levels (which probably would better be called sections) even on the same elevation of others, so i can achieve different ceiling heights for different areas of the building. The problem is, the "background draw" only shows the next lowest level on the list (indicated by the tab order above the 2D view). What i need is to be able to background-draw other levels/sections no matter what level i'm looking at. Perhaps a toggle for each level to show on all levels above or below.
12. Room elevation/height/slope overrides
An elaboration on a previous feature request, this is probably the hardest to program. I think we'd ALL like to be able to set for each room the floor elevation, including sloped floors, as well as ceiling elevations (room heights), including sloped ceilings. This alone would take SH3D from 4.2 to 5.0.
13. On-the-fly wall defaults
Instead of having to go into preferences each time to change the thickness and height of the wall i'm about to draw, there should be an easier way to either modify the default or even apply these dimensions only to the next wall drawn. Perhaps by double-clicking on the "New Wall" icon, a user can input new or temporary defaults to the next wall(s) about to be drawn. Or maybe a ubiquitous utility window where the user can enter the defaults on a whim.
14. Convert Dimension lines to walls
Often i know the dimensions first and can construct a room (or false room) from point-to-point. After i get the dimensions right, i'd like to be able to just convert those measurement lines directly to walls, rather than going back and basically redoing the lines i just set up.
15. Hideable 3D View window
I like the fact that i can put the 3D view into another window, but it's kind of useless if i can't put it under my working window, or at least minimize it. We can definite use the ability to put the window out of the way without having to manually sliding it off the screen.
16. Custom icons for furniture in 2D view
I'm a traditionalist and i like my floorplans to look clean and sharp while working on or printing them. When furniture is placed in SH3D, top-view, colored graphics really mess up the sharpness of the floor plan. While it's great that there is an option to use either catalog icons or top-view images of the furniture, it would be great if we could also choose simple, B&W line graphics or a user-defined pic to insert onto the 2D view.
17. Remember dialog window placement
I often have to move the Modify Walls and Modify Furniture dialogs out of the way so i can remind myself which element i'm changing (by looking on the 2D floorplan). I hate having to move them out of the way each time i open a new one.
18. 3D Rotate in 2D view
It's good that we can rotate along the XY axis while modifying the placement of furniture in the 2D view, but we could do even better to rotate along the YZ axis as well. I have some wall-mounted spotlights that i need to face at different angles. If i could twist the mounting, i could get them to aim right.
19. "Unlit" textures
Along the lines of manipulating textures of furniture or walls, textures of light bulbs or light covers should always give 100% of their texture light, unaffected by the light sources that hit them. In 3D world creation, these textures are called "unlit." A simple checkbox when choosing a texture would force those textures on the element to always be drawn at their own brightness rather than the light imposed on them externally.
20. Group Lights
When grouping light sources, there is no way to assign their individual brightnesses (but as a group). It would help if the "Modify Furniture" dialog would show the light strength field, at least when one or all of the grouped elements are light sources. (The Light Strength field is there when multiple light sources are in the selection, but not when they are grouped.)
21. Customizable light types
It would be helpful if, besides omni-directional lights, we also had spotlights and "incidental" lights. I use a lot of spotlights and track-lighting to focus light at various spots in a room, which means the light fixture itself should not get lit up by its own light (except by reflected light). SH3D's omnis do not allow for spotlighting, and the workarounds are weak at best. It would only be helpful if we could choose the width of the light cone at its base.
"Incidental" lighting is applying a room-wide light for a closed space. It's like a universal room light, but the light from the source is not attenuated by the angle of the surface it hits, only by the distance. That is, a surface that runs parallel to a light ray, starting at distance D extending from the light source, gets the same amount of light as a surface sitting perpendicular to the light source at distance D. (Of course, the "gathered" light fades as you go down the breadth of the wall.)
22. Customizable light color & strength
I think we can minimize the number of light sources in the furniture catalogue if we could choose the color we want the light source to emanate. Plus you give a lot more control to the user.
As far as light strength, in the real world of course, we can't dictate the brightness-to-distance ratio, but in the digital world, it's possible. It would be great to use some mathematical curves to determine this ratio to help in our lighting of the 3d scene...
23. PCX file Import
Using UT99's 3D map editor for years, i have a HUGE collection of PCX image files, which i dont want to copy and convert and use up alot of HD space unnecessarily. I could definitely use the ability to import color-indexed PCX files.
24. Auto date photo creation
In the Date field of the Create Photo dialog, it would be nice if the program would insert todays date by default.
25. Virtual Visitor camera movement without selecting the VV icon
It's anti-intuitive to have to select the VV icon to move its view in the 3D window. Mouse movements should be able to be mapped to the XYZ movement of the VV camera (see #7 above).
26. Preview textures when importing
For some reason, the OpenFile dialog does not allow me to preview the texture i'm about to import, offering me only a list view or detailed view. Would love to able to preview the texture i'm about to import...
27. Light switches and animations made available for Video Creation
One day, maybe in SH3D 10.0, we could have animations that would be included in a rendered video, such as a fireplace fire or fish in an aquarium. Also, triggers could be set up to activate lights as the video camera moves thru rooms, to see how the architect's lighting choices affect the view of the space.
If my fellow users can see the usefulness of any of these wishes, a +1 would help our programmer to know what features would get more universal use (not that this is a voting booth!
).Also, my apologies if putting this all together creates a problem with one-issue threads. I figured this was better rather than taking over 27 threads in a row in the Wishlist forum section
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