Improved entity selection; revamps Properties tab

[penolakushari]

So far my idea for entity selection was to move it into a left side panel that would have a tree-like view, something akin to SFM's scene browser or animation software alike (or like that tab PAC3 has!), which would allow for quicker selection of entities and their SMH modifiers that we wish to record. This should be the replacement for that other feature from Properties tab where already recorded entities could be selected, and timelines created. That will require people to relearn all the stuff again, but hopefully this will provide an easier time for animators than original timelines - after all, I think it should require less clicks to access + less messing with opening and closing properties window.

Mainly, to fully replace properties tab, this side panel could have 2 sections, upper being that tree-like view, that lists ALREADY selected entities and expands them into modifiers that SMH on the server has, in the future perhaps modifiers themselves could expand into separate parts they can record, like each flex for face posing, or bones for physical and nonphysical bone modifiers.
Lower section will be a list of all entities the player has recorded stuff on. All this stuff may also need to have some considerations for the whole multiplayer support we've planned, so it may be best to rework everything to support it now than later?

Wishlist:

• A way to group entities or their modifiers into "folder" tree elements, like being able to make a group of a ragdoll, a hat and a gun it has to be able to quickly select some TF2 guy and record his stuff all at once. Could be neat to also make it able to contain just parts of modifiers, so in the future it could be possible to make subgroups within a group, like SFM has that thing where you have an entity, and then groups for arms/legs, and fingers on them, and you can then select all fingers by clicking on that leftfingers group or whatever it was called. This probably would need some thinking done on how it'll look, probably the 2 sections idea could use some work

• Could also make some settings to decide which SMH modifiers will always get selected by "default" when you select something with default right clicking in the game world. It'll select all modifiers by default, and ability to customize it could allow to only select stuff like all bones and position modifiers, but no facial stuff.

[vlazed]

To give some answers for the wishlist

• DTree should allow for both sections to be accomplished. Based on what you mentioned, I think having sections like modifiers and selection groups be in their own subtree in the selected section would be good, while the unselected subtree could either be sorted by parent-children hierarchy or by class. For selection groups themselves, I have a structure that we could start off with for saving and loading custom ones. For example, let's say that we want to load smh/groups/heavy_fingers.txt

{
    "group": "LeftFingers",
    "filter": [ "models/player/heavy.mdl", "models/player/**", "prop_ragdoll"],
    "bones": [ "bip_thumb_0_l" ],
    "subgroups": []
}

Once we select an entity and keyframe it (or whatever adds it to the selected list), then if there's ever a filter, then only the heavy playermodel, any model under "models/player" and subdirectory models, and "prop_ragdoll" classes will have the "LeftFingers" group loaded in. If I wanted to add more fingers in this group, I can add another text file like smh/groups/scout.txt and do something like:

{
    "group": "LeftFingers",
    "filter:" [ "models/player/scout.mdl" ],
    "bones": [ "bip_thumb_0_r" ],
}

This will add the right thumb base. I left out the subgroup field to show that some fields are optional. For specifying filter field multiple times between different text files, this would simply add more classes or models to the filter, not replace them.

• For modifiers enabled by default, we could specify those through the modifier files themselves. By extension, I think depending on which timeline/modifier preset (if we're still using those) is selected, that would apply those modifiers for the selected entity. Otherwise, we could do something like Blender and when we keyframe an entity, we can choose which modifiers to keyframe. Any thoughts on this?

Based on the issue's description, I think I have an idea based on what I recall from SFM, and what I've seen from Blender. Still, it would be nice to see a visual: a rough drawing or derma creation would help.

[penolakushari]

Timelines were going to be removed in favor of the system I've been thinking up, gonna add a rough represenation of what i mean

as for default selection, i was thinking to leave it for some settings menu, which perhaps could use some checkboxes to show which modifiers will be selected by default. so, as for selected tree, it shows entities selected, and then you can see their modifiers in there and select them - even if modifier is unselected, it'll be visible, as long as its entity is selected, if that makes sense. modifiers will not be seen in the recorded entities tree