Blender add-on for exposing the 3D View's rotation locking feature

lockview.py

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bl_info = {
    "name": "Lock View",
    "description": "Exposes rotation locking in the 3D View to a specific viewing angle",
    "author": "Jason van Gumster (Fweeb)",
    "version": (1, 0, 1),
    "blender": (3, 0, 0),
    "location": "3D View > Properties Region > View",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "tracker_url": "",
    "category": "3D View"}

import bpy


def lock_ui(self, context):
    layout = self.layout

    layout.prop(context.space_data.region_3d, 'lock_rotation', text='Lock View Rotation')


def register():
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_PT_view3d_properties.append(lock_ui)


def unregister():
    bpy.types.VIEW3D_PT_view3d_properties.remove(lock_ui)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Thanks for this! I'm using this for drawing with grease pencil, for which obviously you don't want to accidentally orbit the camera. However - this does also prevent you from being able to 2D roll the view (which is useful for drawing because often you want to roll the view to draw a particular curve more easily. Any way it could lock orbit but not roll? Thanks!

Hi there @df-0!

I think what you're looking for is technically possible, but would certainly require quite a bit more work. Right now, this add-on is just exposing functionality that's already built into Blender.

However, there is a workaround. I'm assuming that you're using Grease Pencil from the 2D Animation template. If you do that, you have a camera object and you're drawing from that camera's view. So if you want to rotate the view, you can just select the camera object and rotate that. It's a bit clunky because you have to hop out of Draw mode to do that, so maybe an add-on could be written that allows limited camera movement from within Edit mode. Maybe I'll play with that in the next week or so.

Cool - thanks. Yes, there's definitely some workarounds! I tend to use view roll a lot when drawing in blender - there's a reason it was built into old animation light tables, and it's easily accessible in stuff like photoshop (hold R) and toon boom (hold ctrl+alt) - and you currently don't need to have a camera for it to work, but of course it gets disabled by view lock. There's a request to add this as core functionality but these things can take a while! https://blender.community/c/rightclickselect/q2cbbc/?sorting=hot

For posterity (anyone who happens to stumble across this link) this is now exposed natively in Blender as of 4.4: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/122185 in the 3D viewport Sidebar > View > View Lock > Rotation