Coordinate/Position Control

For things that require positioning, you often have to have two (or three for 3D stuff!) sliders that seem, more or less, disconnected. Now I know that having a node with multiple outputs does not work with the program flow, so what I propose is a sort of "linked" controls via another interface.

For example the color picker opens another window as a custom controller to specify a value (or 4 values, RGBA).

So what if there were a sort of coordinate grid. When you selected a coordinate, it would change the two sliders connected to it?

It sounds like the kind of idea that would be rejected or impossible, but I wanted to spark some interest or thoughts in this subject.

sounds a good idea.

The right way to implement this is adjustable points in the preview. Users of the filter could drag the point around the image or enter the point coordinates manually. The point could be placed beyond the boundaries of the image, so there will be some kind of pointers at the edge of the preview to allow selecting and adjusting such points.

Internally, they would be linked to a control component, and you could obtain both coordinates and use them within the filter tree. If there are multiple Point Control components in the filter, points could be distinguished by adjustable "crosshair" look and color (both are configured per Point Control).

Perhaps there will be a new component type dedicated to all this (because otherwise we'll need to implement multi-output components to output both coordinates as Green). The big question is, "points" or "point arrays"? Or even "iteratable attribute-carrying point arrays"?

This is planned, but definitely not for v4.0.

Hmm ok But why delay such a feature when you can go for a really simple approach:

A new slider control variant with the option to output either x or y of a mouse click (scaled to 0..1,0..1 on the image canvas)

ThreeDee.. something like this (place the color picker ring where you want the star)?

Positioned Star.ffxml

OMG, this is genius!
Only have to solve the y=0 thing, as Betis mentioned, and then it's a perfect component!

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Sphinx wrote: something like this (place the color picker ring where you want the star)?

Very nice, Sphinx. You even solved it despite me forgotting there is no color picker to pick the color from the image itself! Actually, this is a better solution.

There doesn't seem to be a way to change the color picker functionality of both saturation and hue reverting to zero when lightness is set to zero. So here is a slightly different approach that circumvents this problem:

The position control is affected by the size control in such way that "zero" position puts the entire element (in this case, a circle) just outside the image area at one edge and "100" (or "1") position puts it just outside the other edge. The position control is relative to the size of the element.

Thus, when you hit the zero position, the element is outside the frame and the picker zero-reset is not visible.

Positioned Circle.ffxml

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the bigger the object, the more sensitive the X,Y controls are, right?

Yes. The x and y controls go fr om -r to 1+r, wh ere r is the radius of the circle.

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can the Alpha in the color picker control the size of the object?

Certainly -- that or other things. Just have to enable it in the editor.

There are four individual controls in the color picker that can be remapped to whatever one can come up with, although x and y are probably the most intuitive in the color square itself.

You could for instance use the Hue in the color picker for z-coordinate -- that's still fairly logical -- or rotation. And alpha for size, scale (zoom), repeat, or anything else that seems suitable.

Well, suddenly the possibilities are endless.