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THE REQUEST:

I would like to be able to have at least FOUR active viewports when I am positioning things.

Top - Front - Side - Angled  (Each position fully adjustable, these were just examples.)

When TRANSLATING a Prop into position, the GIZMO would be visible in all the viewports at the same time.

The "Home" button would center the selected item in all active viewports. But it should maintain the orientation of the viewport.  That way if moving it in one viewport moves it "off-screen" in another viewport, you could hit the "Home" button and re-center everything.

Actually, that's a good add-on request...  Make an option (or a User Preference) that the HOME button should either use a default orientation (current behavior) or allow you to keep the same camera vector that is currently being used when you push the Home button.

WHY?  WHAT'S THE VALUE?  I could see at a glance an item's true position in 3D space.

This would also be great for when you want your avatar to reach out and touch something (without using the "Reach" function).

DEMONTRATION OF NEED:  Try putting a screwdriver in your avatar's hand, and have his fingers grip it properly, and you'll see what I mean.

Lacking this feature, I keep rotating my viewport over and over and over and over again into various positions.  A prop can look like it's six centimeters in front of my avatar, but then I rotate my viewport and discover it's two meters away.

P.S.

Have you ever caught yourself tilting your head to get a better view of something in iClone?

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

Nobody commented yet, but I think it's a useful idea, especially if there is an single toggle (hot key) to switch between multi-viewport and single viewport layouts. I've also seen implementations where there are toolbar buttons to switch between various layouts.

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A nice feature, but I'm pretty sure that a Graphic card with a bucket full of RAM would be required to keep all views real time.

Gerry

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System: Win 10 Pro (21H2), Asus X99-E WS, CPU i7-5930K -3,5 GHz, 32 GB DDR4 2666-16 RAM, NVidia GTX 1080 Ti GPU - 11 GB VRAM(Driver Studio-536.99), Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB SSD, 6 TB HD storage.

Yes and no.

The model is already in the graphics card' memory.  You do have more overhead regarding z-depth culling (occlusion) and stuff like that, so I agree it doesn't come for free.

But on the other hand, we already have the ability to drive two viewports; the main viewport and a mini-viewport, with different camera views.

So this would just be an extension of that.  The main thing is to have the gizmo active in more than one viewport.  If your performance suffers too much with four windows, close one or two of them.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

And speaking of extensions, I always had difficulty making productive use of this pnp feature.
My request would be to actually see pixel shader from the mini viwport camera view while manipulating the scene in the main view, so you can instantly view adjustments in the final shot. Without this option I see no real benefit of pnp.

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Reallusion iClone & CC Pipeline --- Plugins: Iray HeadShot SkinGen.  CrazyTalk Animator Pipeline, CrazyTalk, Maya LT, Daz, Substance Painter Indie, Substance Designer Indie, B2M Pro+ Substance Live, Sculptris, Wrap, Unity, UE4, Perception Neuron Ready
SurfaceBook 2 Windows 11 Pro 64-bit Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8650U CPU @ 1.90GHz -2.11 GHz 512GB Solid State Hard Drive 8GB RAM Nvidia GeForce 1050GTX
Dell  Alienware m18X R2 18.5" Custom Convertible Tablet Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit Intel Core I7-3840QM 2.80GHz Quad Core 8 Thread 3.2GHz Turbo 512GB Solid State Hard Drive+1TB X2 RAID Disk Drive 32GB RAM Nvidia Geforce GTX 680m 2GB X2 SLI Custom Multi-touch. Dagi capacitive touch stylus
Microsoft Surface Pro 2 10.1" Tablet Windows 10 64-bit Intel Core I5-4200U 1.60GHz 2.3GHz Turbo 128GB Solid State Hard Drive 4GB RAM HD 4000 Graphics Multi-touch Wacom Digitizer screen Surface Pen+Axiotron Studio Pen
Asus Vivo Tab 8" Tablet Windows 10 32-bit Intel Atom Z-3740 1.33GHz Quad Core 32GB Solid State Hard Drive 2GB RAM HD 4000 Graphics Multi-touch Wacom Digitizer Wacom stylus.

@Sifr,

My current use for the mini viewport is when I want to fine-tune my camera motions.

Especially when my camera is following a path (and optionally, "Looking" at a moveable dummy target), then I can move the path control points and the dummy target in the main viewport, and see the results in the mini viewport.

You can see a few places where I used that technique in this little tutorial:

https://vimeo.com/90419397

But what's lacking is the ability to "edit" in both windows, and the ability to have more than just the two.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

Ok well, maybe there are some uses lol, but pixel shader isn't one of them. I agree multiple manipulable viewports would solve both our problems so long as each biewport has an option to allow for independent viewport rendering. What good is the pnp if you can't wysiwyg focal lengths, particles, and atmospherics ect. in the viewer's camera?

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Reallusion iClone & CC Pipeline --- Plugins: Iray HeadShot SkinGen.  CrazyTalk Animator Pipeline, CrazyTalk, Maya LT, Daz, Substance Painter Indie, Substance Designer Indie, B2M Pro+ Substance Live, Sculptris, Wrap, Unity, UE4, Perception Neuron Ready
SurfaceBook 2 Windows 11 Pro 64-bit Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8650U CPU @ 1.90GHz -2.11 GHz 512GB Solid State Hard Drive 8GB RAM Nvidia GeForce 1050GTX
Dell  Alienware m18X R2 18.5" Custom Convertible Tablet Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit Intel Core I7-3840QM 2.80GHz Quad Core 8 Thread 3.2GHz Turbo 512GB Solid State Hard Drive+1TB X2 RAID Disk Drive 32GB RAM Nvidia Geforce GTX 680m 2GB X2 SLI Custom Multi-touch. Dagi capacitive touch stylus
Microsoft Surface Pro 2 10.1" Tablet Windows 10 64-bit Intel Core I5-4200U 1.60GHz 2.3GHz Turbo 128GB Solid State Hard Drive 4GB RAM HD 4000 Graphics Multi-touch Wacom Digitizer screen Surface Pen+Axiotron Studio Pen
Asus Vivo Tab 8" Tablet Windows 10 32-bit Intel Atom Z-3740 1.33GHz Quad Core 32GB Solid State Hard Drive 2GB RAM HD 4000 Graphics Multi-touch Wacom Digitizer Wacom stylus.

I don't see an urgent need for seeing full fledged effects in all viewports, but just to be able to facilitate placement and positioning in 3D space would be very helpful.

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That's all I'm looking for.  That's my motivation; placement and positioning.

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Of course, now that you bring it up, making the level of display a user-controllable option wouldn't be too bad either.

But even if I had to manually click into "Smooth Shading" or "Quick Shading" mode because I have a low-power graphics card, that wouldn't be too horrible.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

Maybe I didn't clarify my suggestion, don't make the only object manipulable viewport the only view pixel shader can be viewed in, meaning..... allow the user to manipulate the scene while seeing it from the final render view (the end viewer render) in the 2nd panel so you can make adjustments and get immediate feedback from the final render view (the end viewer render).

My proposal sounds more sensible, keep the same pnp but allow to see final camera shot with pixel shader and add an option in the screen panel for orthogonal view selection and object manipulation, basically just make both views interactive & there you have it a happy medium.

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Reallusion iClone & CC Pipeline --- Plugins: Iray HeadShot SkinGen.  CrazyTalk Animator Pipeline, CrazyTalk, Maya LT, Daz, Substance Painter Indie, Substance Designer Indie, B2M Pro+ Substance Live, Sculptris, Wrap, Unity, UE4, Perception Neuron Ready
SurfaceBook 2 Windows 11 Pro 64-bit Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8650U CPU @ 1.90GHz -2.11 GHz 512GB Solid State Hard Drive 8GB RAM Nvidia GeForce 1050GTX
Dell  Alienware m18X R2 18.5" Custom Convertible Tablet Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit Intel Core I7-3840QM 2.80GHz Quad Core 8 Thread 3.2GHz Turbo 512GB Solid State Hard Drive+1TB X2 RAID Disk Drive 32GB RAM Nvidia Geforce GTX 680m 2GB X2 SLI Custom Multi-touch. Dagi capacitive touch stylus
Microsoft Surface Pro 2 10.1" Tablet Windows 10 64-bit Intel Core I5-4200U 1.60GHz 2.3GHz Turbo 128GB Solid State Hard Drive 4GB RAM HD 4000 Graphics Multi-touch Wacom Digitizer screen Surface Pen+Axiotron Studio Pen
Asus Vivo Tab 8" Tablet Windows 10 32-bit Intel Atom Z-3740 1.33GHz Quad Core 32GB Solid State Hard Drive 2GB RAM HD 4000 Graphics Multi-touch Wacom Digitizer Wacom stylus.