Make Blender-style G, S, R shortcuts available everywhere (and by default)

[Kartopod]

In my opinion, Blender's G to Grab, S to Scale, and R to Rotate shortcuts have completely revolutionized creative software and should be adopted everywhere.

I'm aware that they've already been implemented in the 3d view, but I see a few problems.

• They are not default, the user needs to set them up manually.
• They are only available in the 3D view, nowhere else.

Global availability

When you have the muscle memory locked in, it becomes extremely simple to manipulate entities. Blender does this extremely well, and the fact that these shortcuts are available EVERYWHERE is what makes them so powerful. I never ever have to even think for a second when I need to move something, I just select -> G -> Move -> Click to confirm. It just works.

When this is available everywhere, the value compounds on the fact that the user develops muscle memory. In Blender, these shortcuts work in every possible window/context that you can possibly think of.

• 3D Viewport
• 2D Viewport (Grease Pencil, technically still 3D but showcases how useful it would be in Godot's 2D viewport)
• 2D UV Editor
• Timeline
• Graph Editor
• Shader / Geometry node editor

Precision without having to be precise

Not having to drag from a specific point

You have the ability to be very precise without physically having to be precise. If you have one or more entities selected (Say nodes in 3D, or points on the graph editor), you don't have to move your mouse to click and drag on the small move gizmo, or worse, a single point on a zoomed out graph. You just press G wherever your mouse already is, and it just works.

Even the micro action of moving your mouse to the gizmo being avoided (in all contexts) will save you SO MUCH time in the long run. Note that this is without even mentioning the fact that you don't even have to THINK of switching to a 'move tool' or any other tool, which would need to to switch back to the selection tool again after you're done, making this even more of a time saver.

Easy axis selection

Blender lets you press X, Y, or Z after pressing G/S/R to let you constrain to a particular axis. This is great, but another feature which takes it another step further is the fact that you can hold the Middle Mouse Button to bring up a line that let's you select the closest axis WHILE you're making the transformation. You don't even have to look at your keyboard at all. (Blue circle here shows when I'm pressing MMB)

The fact that you're already moving the mouse in a particular direction aids with this even more, all you have to do is tap middle mouse button momentarily during the movement to snap to that axis.

Note: I've seen that pressing middle mouse does partially exist in 4.3, but it doesn't seem to be working in 4.4 beta 1. Either way, it works slightly differently, where you tap it to switch to the next axis, which is not nearly as useful.

Graph editor

The graph editor is INFINITELY better to work with with G, S, R.

Grab

Getting the obvious out of the way, I hope I've made it clear how nice grabbing with G, paired with tapping MMB is:

Scale to change timing

Scaling is extremely intuitive to change the timing.

Manipulating handles with S and R

You can manipulate the handles by scaling and/or rotating keyframes directly.

Additionally, in Blender you can:

• Select the handles themselves, which makes scaling or rotating them even more useful
• Set the pivot for these transformations:
  
  but these are probably better left for their own discussion of animation UX.

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The key areas that would hugely benefit from G, S, R in godot are the

• 2D viewport
• AnimationPlayer timeline
• AnimationPlayer bezier curve editor

But I would love to see it come to the shader graph editor aswell. Is it a necessity to have it in the shader graph? Probably not. But it really does feel extremely intuitive where anytime you need to move ANYTHING at all, you just press G without thinking about it.

I hope I've convinced you on the usefulness of the G, S, R shortcuts being adopted globally by default in godot. If all of this sounds completely unnecessary, I strongly urge you to play around with them in Blender. It is life changing. You will quickly see the usefulness even after playing with it for just a little bit.
This is the one feature that I strongly miss in every other software I use.

[Calinou]

godotengine/godot#78148 adds Blender-style manipulation shortcuts by default, but there is some controversy around it due to the conflicts with the existing Q/W/E/R scheme (namely, R).