Movement Modifiers

I've finally gotten a system ready for modifiers, which are the basic editing component of The Forge. Any tool that you use to modify a model is a modifier. Some modifiers do not require user input, like for instance, one that does smoothing on the model, or the transition modifiers, which change what is selected in a model when you go from one mode to another (for example, the end points of any selected edge get selected when you switch over from edge mode to vertex mode). Other modifiers require user input. In Wings and in The Forge, this is typically done by turning on the modifier and moving the mouse around, which applies the input values to the modifier. For example, you choose Move > X from the menu, and then you can move the mouse side-to-side, see visually where the movement will put the selected stuff, and then apply or cancel the modification.

It took quite a bit of time between yesterday and today to design and develop a system for handling various modifiers, but it is basically going now. You can see in the screenshot below, that you can do some basic editing of the model's mesh.



Right now, the only things you can do are move vertices, edges, faces, and meshes. I'm still planning on rotation around an axis, as well as scaling (uniform, axis, and radial), along with a few modifiers to add to the mesh (connect two vertices, cut edges, and extrude faces), as well as modifiers to delete parts of a mesh.

The other day I said that once these things are going, the state of the program would move from pre-alpha to alpha, which I think I'd better retract. Once these things are going, you will indeed be able to do basic modeling, but there are a number of other features that would need to be implemented still, so the program would still be in a pre-alpha state. Having said that, though, having the underlying modifier system in place means huge progress!