Don't forget to check out the current frame that shows up when you insert a background image with View / Image - like I mentioned currently this is closest to what I am thinking of doing first, so any feedback on that would be helpful too.

Here's what it looks like in MoI when you insert an image:



You can see the 5 ghosted handles that frame the image. If you move over one of them, it will solidify and highlight. You can click and drag on one of the corner grips to scale, and click and drag on the rotate grip to rotate.

Additionally, if you click and release (instead of drag) on the rotate grip, a 3 axis rotate ball will appear:



At that point you can click and drag on any of those circles to perform a rotation around that axis. If you click off of a circle it will dismiss that larger rotation widget.

My current idea is to get this basic type of frame (probably with some additional tuneups, but the same basic idea) working on planar curves or surfaces.

I'm not sure yet how to extend it to work with 3D objects instead of only planar objects. But I think that just having it only for planar objects at first would still be very useful, so I'm thinking of taking that step first.

- Michael