Gamepad support

[cochrane]

Could this work? Might be worth a try.

Rough idea for how the UI works:

• Two modes, camera and bone/posing
• Camera mode: Right analog turns camera, direction pad and/or left analog stick moves it.
• Bone posing mode:
  • Direction pad selects bone: "Up" goes to parent, "down" goes to first child, "left"/"right" go to next/previous sibling. Only single selection for now (but multiple would be easy).
  • Analog sticks and/or triggers control rotation. Precise mapping to be determined experimentally.
  • For analog sticks, may make sense to use X,Y,A,B buttons to restrict axis to rotate around.
  • Analog stick/triggers do not set position/rotation directly. Rather, they change it slightly, depending on the degree to which they're pressed down.

Camera mode is arguably optional; I think most work will be done in bone posing mode. But it is what people are used to.

Have to investigate whether to start with the apple game controller framework (easy to use!) or good old HID Manager (controllers that are reasonably priced and easy to find in stores, but have to define own mapping!). In the long run it may be necessary to support both.

[sethk]

This is such an awesome idea! It makes so much more sense than inputting values or using the mouse.