The static mesh editor is not terribly user friendly right now. After substantial use of it, I have some suggestions for improvement organized below from ‘really frustrating and should be fixed ASAP’ to ‘minor nitpick’:
- Using the scale transform gizmo is too sensitive when objects are small (even with snapping off). I’m forced to edit the details panel of tiny collision primitives directly to make reasonable changes to them.
- Clicking once without dragging on the transform gizmo on a selected piece of collision geometry deselects the object. This is not just a problem in this editor, but shows up everywhere if you click on a part of the transform gizmo that is not drawn over or inside of the object it is transforming. This doesn’t end up being an issue most of the time in other viewports since your object is big and solid, but in the static mesh editor when you’re manipulating wireframe collision primitives your cursor falls through the object almost every time when you accidentally click without dragging.
- Camera controls don’t show up until you select a piece of collision geometry, despite those controls having nothing to do with the geometry you have selected.
- Make the near plane nearer when in this viewport, it is extremely useful to be able to get very close to a mesh to examine it carefully without geometry getting culled early.
- Default camera speed should be lower in this editor in general (minor inconvenience, but everyone probably ends up tuning this down a bit if they’re doing any real work in the viewport).