I haven’t been able to use my SpacePilot 3D mouse in TD since viewer interaction support was implemented back in 2020. I’m guessing this is because my old hardware was only supported up to v10.4.10 of the 3DConnexion driver (current version is v10.8.3). Is there a minimal driver version requirement in TD?
Support for other software by vendors such as Autodesk comes through separate installers bundled with the 3DConnexion driver. I’ve been able to continue using my old hardware with recent versions of Autodesk products by installing only the vendor specific MSI installer after extracting it from the latest 3DConnexion installer while maintaining the old v10.4.10 driver. I’m wondering if there is something similar I could do to get TD working with my current 3D mouse…
Finally, is there any planned integration of 3DConnexion hardware at the network level in TD? I always find myself reaching for my 3D mouse when I need to move around in the network which is immediately followed by a little disappointement
Sorry to hear the 3d mouse support isn’t working for you. We’re actually still using an older version of their SDK, but we didn’t realize that it wasn’t compatible with some hardware. Looking at the documentation now it says that version 17.5.x of the 3DxWinWare driver is required and I think that might correspond to 3dxware v10.5 (their versioning is very confusing) which i guess is newer than you have.
Unfortunately, our 3dconnexion support is baked directly into TouchDesigner so it’s not possible to swap it out for an older version.
Out of curiosity, does your mouse not work at all if you install newer drivers?
As far as network navigation, I agree that would work really well with the 3d mouse and it’s been on my wish list for awhile. Hopefully when I can find some time I might be able to add it.
I first tried my 3D mouse (original SpacePilot) with a more recent version and it didn’t work at all. I then found this KB article which clearly states that mine topped at v10.4.10.
I’d be happy to help in any way when you decide to integrate the 3d mouse network navigation.
ah, i just ordered one for black friday specifically because i assumed the 3dconnexion support from 2020 would allow me to navigate the network with it. Would love to see that implemented some day
@tohox I posted to the 3dconnexion forums about the version issue and the answer implied that core support should still work with the 10.4 drivers. It should only be a few of the “newer” features that were introduced in 10.5 that wouldn’t be available for you, but I don’t think we implement those anyways.
Based on that answer, I’m not sure why it wouldn’t work for you in TouchDesigner if you have the 10.4 drivers installed. I can try downgrading my own drivers and see if I can identify an issue, but the system can be pretty opaque so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to tell anything.
Regarding network editor control, I’m glad to see the interest out there and we’ll try to squeeze it in when we have some time.
Thanks for following through with my request! Much appreciated.
The behavior I observe when using my 3dconnexion mouse in TD is the same one can observe in Windows explorer (or any other unsupported app I assume) where the up/down movements of the 3D mouse mimic a mouse wheel controlling only the vertical scroll or zoom. So when I open a Geo, Light or Camera viewer in TD I can only change the zoom in/out and the motion is performed in repeating steps as if I were using the mouse-wheel. This is regardless of the viewer’s currently selected 3D SpaceMouse Navigation Mode. Further, if I disable Mouse Wheel Navigation under Preferences-Network then this behavior disappears and I have no control whatsoever via my 3D mouse.
I can however tell that TD is able to access my 3D mouse as when I use the Joystick CHOP I can select my SpacePilot and use all axes and most of the buttons.
When TD has the focus I can also see the display on my SpacePilot switch to TouchDesigner.
Thanks for the extra details. The Joystick CHOP doesn’t actually use the spacemouse SDK and only recognizes it as a generic DirectX input device which is why it might work differently.
It definitely sounds like TouchDesigner isn’t recognizing the device which is why its imitating a regular mouse.
We are using the official SDK on Windows and Mac for 3D navigation, but I know there are some features like icons and custom commands that haven’t been implemented yet. Is there anything in particular you are looking for?
I don’t know what’s available in the 4+ SDK, but based on this experience, I am a little wary of updating and accidentally excluding any current users.
The current implementation focused on 3d navigation in 3d viewports and that is all working since the 2020 release. If you right-click on any 3D viewport, you’ll see a 3D SpaceMouse Navigation menu that gives you a few options on how the mouse controls the viewport i.e. does it pivot around the object or around the camera.
Pan/zoom in the node graph (network editor) is not implemented at the moment, but it’s on our request list.
I know some commands like ‘Fit’ will work (at least on the compact one I have), but we haven’t worked on these specifically yet. Commands generally have to be implemented individually, so if there are any specific requests let me know and I can put them on our list.
Thats awesome news…yeah shortcuts and macros come to mind so you can setup a series of commands in series to auto generate operator nodes systems you might use a lot for example
Not sure if this is already implemented or not but I also use the 3D lock button quite often when doing CAD. This temporarilly locks all the rotation axes only allowing translation in the plane orthogonal to the camera.
The four L, T, R, F (left, top, right, front) buttons are also natural shortcuts for me when navigating around a model.
The directional options should be fairly straightforward since we already support those camera moves. The lock thing would be a little more work since we’d need to implement that in our 3D camera first before it could be exposed to the spacemouse. We’ll keep it in mind though.
I have a really old original one and it is working fine with TD 2021.15800. Not all features of their obsolete control app work but enough to make it very usable. If you have trouble and need more details drop me a line.
