Suggestion: Better 3D viewing interface

[francis_flavin]

I often work with graphs in 3-space with nodes arrayed across x, y, and z axes. The current Gephi graph viewing window produces some wonderful visualizations in 3-space. However, it would be helpful if the user could navigate in 3-space using a similar interface to the one found in Blender (a 3D modeling and ray-tracing tool).

In Gephi's 3-space viewer, the left mouse button does nothing, holding right mouse button down while panning drags the view along the x and y axes, scrolling the mouse's roller button zooms in and out, and holding the roller button down while panning rotates the view around the x axis.

In Blender, navigation is more efficient: the roller button zooms in and out, and holding the roller button down while panning can rotate the view around the x, y, or z axis depending on the direction of the panning. It's not only easier, but it allows for rotating the view around 3 axes rather than just one, and mouse navigation is intuitive no matter where in the 3D viewing space the user positions himself.

On another note: Gephi is an AMAZING tool. Keep up the fantastic work!


Francis

[gefifly]

This is probably a similar request to my previous post about "flying" inside graphs, using 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator. Blender style navigation would allow actually also nice flying, as far as I can imagine.

If this flying should be working one day, it would be nice to "trigger" external commands based on camera-distance to nodes. So some node attributes could contain some location information, e.g. the location of a file, .mp3 or .jpg, coming closer to that node would trigger some command using this location information, running this file or doing anything you want with it.