Hi, I'd like to know if the following behavior is intended or not, if others can replicate it, and whether I can do something to get rid of it.

If I press Space once to enter the sticky camera tool (ie the hand cursor), then hit S for selection tool, and then back to the camera with Space again, the viewport enters a weird mode where the arrow keys now move the camera, ie rotates it some degrees around the view pivot. Holding shift and pressing the arrows in this state nudges the camera sideways. Note that this isn't a 2D transform, it moves the actual view camera. At the same time as it moves the camera, it also frame steps, since this is a global hotkey, so it performs two actions at once with one keypress. Moving the pointer away from the viewport only steps frames.

This is obviously very annoying while animating or doing anything else involving stepping the arrow keys, as I must make sure to have the mouse pointer away from the viewport, or my view will fly away. This is especially annoying if you happened to have locked the the view to your render camera.

I can't find any documentation for these keyboard shortcuts, and they only come in to effect after switching between selection and view mode on a newly launched Houdini session. It seems like a bug, but I'm not sure what to make of it.

I've attached a GIF of this, watch the timeline, every time it changes is me pressing arrow keys, note how it moves the camera around simultaneously while the mouse pointer is above the viewport.

I'm currently on Windows 10, but I've had this for years, but it almost seams like I'm the only one somehow.

Yeah, I can repro that. super strange. I can get out of it by hitting ‘S’ and Esc.

I can reproduce this as well. I'm guessing people generally don't encounter this because pressing Esc is the usual method for switching to camera.

jsmack
Yeah, I can repro that. super strange. I can get out of it by hitting ‘S’ and Esc.

Oh nice! Hitting Esc without hitting S in between actually works too, but the behavior comes back as soon as you hit the S and Space keys again.

I'll see if I can get used to using Esc instead of space, but it's not ideal when you're left-handed. For instance, I use Backspace instead of Tab to open the node menu in the graph which is great, but Esc is pretty far away from where I keep my right hand so it's not very natural for me.

Is this really not documented anywhere though? The arrow keys to move the camera is a bit weird to begin with, and the fact that the frame steps at the same time seems like a bug.

arvid
Is this really not documented anywhere though? The arrow keys to move the camera is a bit weird to begin with, and the fact that the frame steps at the same time seems like a bug.

I think this is a bug 100%