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Pie / Radial Menus

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Trousers
Posts: 3
Joined: November 27th, 2019, 9:12 pm

Pie / Radial Menus

Post by Trousers »

Hello all, first time poster so hopefully I'm not too noobish.

I use a 3D program called Blender, open source, free, it's great. There's a UI element in it, called a 'pie menu'. This is what it looks like:

Image

Basically what it does is you press a button, and this menu will appear at the mouse cursor position. The great thing about it is how it rewards muscle memory. So if you are starting out, you press the button, menu pops up, and you move the mouse to left/right/diagonal etc wherever you want to go, and click. But once you get muscle memory and know intuitively where what you want is, you can press the button to bring up the meny, and instantly 'flick' the mouse in the direction you want, and it will select that item. Without you needing to click. So basically once you are used to it you can have things selected while your mouse is anywhere on the screen in milliseconds, it is very intuitive.

So why on Earth am I on about this? I use Rainmeter lightly, have never created my own skin from scratch, but I am wondering if you could do the same thing in Rainmenter for Windows in general. For example you have a pie menu that has items to launch folders, programs, anything really. It would be awesome for productivity. My questions are, is this kind of thing even possible with Rainmeter? Where would I even start creating such a thing?

If what I'm describing doesn't make much sense or you want to see how good this function works, Blender is a free program, you can download here: https://www.blender.org/download/. Hold ctrl + tab for the function. I'm not trying to promote this program just trying to get accross how intuitive this feature is and how great it would be to have in Windows. As a long shot, since it is open source, the code for the pie menu is available (if you install, it is found in C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.81\2.81\scripts\addons\space_view3d_pie_menus). The scripts are all there in Python. Is there any way of using this as a basis? Most of the work is done already.

Sorry for the huge post guys, hopefully this post isn't just a bag of eyerolls.

Thanks for your help.
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Yamajac
Posts: 134
Joined: June 30th, 2014, 8:44 am

Re: Pie / Radial Menus

Post by Yamajac »

radial menus are used everywhere, not just blender. I think they're most recognized by CS:GO's buy menu honestly. If you google for a csgo buy menu rainmeter skin, you find a few of them people have made.


The general gist of it is just some triangles around a central point. Just use a few shape meters with leftmouseupaction.
Trousers
Posts: 3
Joined: November 27th, 2019, 9:12 pm

Re: Pie / Radial Menus

Post by Trousers »

Yamajac wrote: November 27th, 2019, 10:32 pm radial menus are used everywhere, not just blender. I think they're most recognized by CS:GO's buy menu honestly. If you google for a csgo buy menu rainmeter skin, you find a few of them people have made.


The general gist of it is just some triangles around a central point. Just use a few shape meters with leftmouseupaction.
Downloaded one to try. Definitely the general concept but missing many of the features that would make it great. Main thing I'd like is having the skin hidden, then appear at the mouse cursor location when a keyboard or mouse key is pressed, then dissapear when you have selected what you want. That menu just stays static in the same position.

Other optional thing but I think it really elevates the Blender one is the ability to select with not just mouse clicks but also 'flicks' of the mouse if they're done fast enough in the direction you want to go. Hard to describe but give Blender a go if curious.
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Yamajac
Posts: 134
Joined: June 30th, 2014, 8:44 am

Re: Pie / Radial Menus

Post by Yamajac »

Trousers wrote: November 27th, 2019, 10:54 pm Downloaded one to try. Definitely the general concept but missing many of the features that would make it great. Main thing I'd like is having the skin hidden, then appear at the mouse cursor location when a keyboard or mouse key is pressed, then dissapear when you have selected what you want. That menu just stays static in the same position.

Other optional thing but I think it really elevates the Blender one is the ability to select with not just mouse clicks but also 'flicks' of the mouse if they're done fast enough in the direction you want to go. Hard to describe but give Blender a go if curious.
You'd just use leftmousedownaction to open the skin and leftmouseupaction to select something. Not particularly complicated, honestly.
Trousers
Posts: 3
Joined: November 27th, 2019, 9:12 pm

Re: Pie / Radial Menus

Post by Trousers »

Yamajac wrote: November 27th, 2019, 11:14 pm You'd just use leftmousedownaction to open the skin and leftmouseupaction to select something. Not particularly complicated, honestly.
I am a complete noob. Maybe I'll just muck around and keep posting here for advice when I get stuck. Google is working well...