Analog Control Devices for Precision in V-Ray and Vantage Interfaces, any suggestions?

[davide_paolini]

Hi all,
Does anyone know if the sliders in V-Ray and Vantage interfaces (such as exposure, etc.) can be controlled in an analog manner, and therefore more precisely with commercially available analog wheels like the Logitech Craft keyboard wheel or the ContourBox or others? Do any of you use them?


Davide Paolini
3D Graphic Academy

[npg]

I doubt it would work, we don't have custom support for such hardware. Even if this device is able to manipulate a slider, it would translate to a mouse move event which doesn't have sub-pixel precision. But you do have a numeric input field on these controls if you need more precise values. Could you explain your use case?

Side note: We support 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse for analog camera control, but that's a different thing.

[davide_paolini]

Hi Nikola,

Yes, it's true that with numerical values, you can be very precise, undoubtedly. However, in terms of visual feedback, I personally find it better, for example, to move the horizontal sliders with the mouse, and then change the number only when necessary. A wheel control capable of doing this would be very useful because, in an analog way, it allows for better and faster workflow. Below, I'm attaching a very brief video of the Logitech Craft Keyboard and its functioning in Photoshop controls; it expresses the level of feedback very well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGAt...CXcxODAxMjAyNA

Obviously, with driver support, you would achieve sub-pixel precision, which would be perfect. However, in my opinion, it might be sufficient to have a wheel that, while holding down the left mouse button with one hand (in order to click on the slider you want to move), you can scroll the wheel with the other to simulate horizontal movement, pixel by pixel, of course.

Thank you in advance for your comment,

[npg]

Now that you brought this up, I remembered that we actually have modifiers for our sliders. If you hold down CTRL it should change the value by a smaller step (0.1% of the maximum) when moving the mouse. (Hold Shift to snap at 10% increments or Shift+Ctrl for 1%). Does this help you?

[davide_paolini]

Super! Great! I just tried and holding CTRL is the perfect mouse sensitivity I was looking for! Thank you for this modification, sorry I didn't see it in the changelog of the latest update.

Thank you so much!

[npg]

No worries. It was actually added in 1.8.2, back in October 2022.