Editor Observations from a long time Unity User, BabylonJS Noob

Questions
1

I offer these first impressions in the spirit of helpfulness, not to be critical. There’s always a learning curve when encountering a new software tool and after a while we get used to quirks and learn to ignore or work around, so at least in my experience fresh eyes are useful in making a better product.

Also, I’m trialing the editor on Macs, some of these things are clearly cross-platform issues…

Issues

  1. Starting editor by double-clicking .editorproject file does not load selected file (This method of starting the editor is actually stressed as best practice in the Workflow Tutorial)
  2. Scaling handles in preview window are very very difficult to use; basically the handles lose focus as soon as you drag out of the handle’s bounds. (Actually this seems mostly to be true in the default scene that loads every time the editor is started, works better in new scene ¯_(ツ)_/¯ )

Annoying

  1. Is it possible to get rid of the default scene that loads every time?
  2. Mac Keyboard Delete key & OS Edit/Delete Menu items do not work. Forward delete (found on extended Mac keyboard, but not on smaller keyboards, like on MBP) does work. Can’t these items be correctly mapped?
  3. totally minor, but app icon on MacOS shelf is tiny…

Confusing

  1. Why are “Play” and “Stop” in completely different parts of the chrome? It would make sense to have the Play button be a toggle.

Annoying & Confusing

  1. what is the purpose of the giant labels in the preview / default scene? How did they get there? Why don’t they correspond to the object’s actual name 1:1. For instance the Documentation label say “Double-Click” — why? Double clicking on it does nothing. Creating new objects don’t seem to get labels, and the labels don’t go away when you delete the corresponding items.

Maybe Just me but…

  1. coming from Unity/Maya toolchain I’d like the option to use the mouse/trackpad to pan & zoom, with q,w,e,r as hot keys for select/translate/rotate/scale tools.

Nice Feature

  1. The scene recording feature is cool.
  2. Ditto The capture frame… feature.

Tested on 27” iMac Retina Display & McBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), both running 10.12.6

2

This is definitely for @julien-moreau

3

@bo_monroe,
The preview version is still here.
http://editor.babylonjs.com/electron/preview/BabylonJS%20Editor%20Setup%203.2.1-beta.4.exe

I reproduced the bug on Mac OS and fixing in the next release (you’ll be able to load a project from the finder)

All your feedbacks are really interesting for me, would you mind create some issues on the github? Issues · BabylonJS/Editor · GitHub

This will help me to fix and give you feedbacks by adding comments per issue
Thanks a lot!

4

@bo_monroe,

I also see a lack of documentation on my part.
Here are some usefull shortcuts:

On the canvas is focused:
“t” = enable/disable position gizmo
“r” = enable/disable rotation gizmo
“f” = focus the selected object
“del.” = remove the selected node

In the graph:
“f2” = rename the node
“del.” = remove the selected node(s)