[Bf-committers] Studio Library addon

[Sybren A. Stüvel]

Hi Martin,

Nice to meet you and welcome to this list.

On Mon, 14 Mar 2022 at 08:30, VDiabloV1 via Bf-committers <
bf-committers at blender.org> wrote:

> Currently, the workflow is very tedious for our animators, where many have
> suggested we develop a python tool similar to that of *Maya's "Studio
> Library"*: https://www.studiolibrary.com/
>

It's a little bit frowned upon to say something along the lines of "Blender
should be like tool X", as usually that's the extent of the feature
request. You're saying something different though, in that you've analysed
what Blender lacks, and even are willing to invest time into developing new
features!


> there is an asset browser that If I'm understanding correctly, can be used
> for any blender "data-block" asset.
>

In theory, it can. In alpha builds of Blender you can enable an
experimental flag that allows you to mark any data-block as asset. However,
this is experimental for a reason, as not all data-block types are equally
well supported. For example, you could mark a Collection as asset, but that
doesn't mean that a reasonable thumbnail is rendered, or that it works as
you expect when dragging the asset into a scene.


> Besides these similar present features, Blender still lacks an easy use,
> and convenient library for not only poses, and selection sets but
> ANIMATIONS as well. Where the artist can utilize a wide range of
> user-friendly organization tools to help them easily create assets that are
> aligned with their preferred workflow.
>

This is what's included in the design of the asset browser based pose
library. It's one of the major reasons that every pose asset is its own
Action data-block: to have space available for multiple frames of
animation. You might be interested in
https://code.blender.org/2021/05/pose-library-v2-0/ and
https://code.blender.org/2021/06/asset-browser-workshop-outcomes/ as well.


> *My question is:*
> Are there any Blender developers that are currently working on
> implementing these features?


Nope, nobody is working on that at the moment.


> If you guys aren't, I will just go ahead and try my hand at developing
> this python addon for Blender.
>

To be fair, I think this shouldn't be done in yet another add-on. Your help
is very much appreciated, and IMO the result of your efforts should be that
Blender itself has this functionality.

What I feel are the steps that need to be taken:

   1. Agree on terminology. We could call it "Animated Pose", or "Animation
   Asset", or "Animation Snippet Pose Asset", or anything else we can come up
   with.
   2. Design a way for artists to determine which frame range gets
   converted to an asset, and which keys/bones are (not) included.
   3. Design UI changes that are necessary for the asset browser to show
   that a pose asset is animated. This could include animated icons (probably
   only animating on mouse-over or something like that, to keep the UI calm).
   This might require quite a few changes in Blender's UI layer, as I don't
   think this is supported at all.
   4. Design different ways in which the animation can be applied to the
   current character. Snippets could be inserted (so any keys after the
   current frame get pushed back in time) or they could overwrite the current
   animation. This should also take care to properly handle pre-existing keys
   that fall between the keys of the animation snippet that overwrites them.
   And I'm sure there are more things to consider here.
   5. And then of course this needs to be implemented, tested, fine-tuned,
   etc.

Part of the implementation would go into the Pose Library add-on, and part
would be in C/C++ in Blender itself.

It's far from a trivial task, but I'd be super happy to have you on board
to work on this!

The project would have to involve the *Pipeline, Assets, and IO* module as
well; that's where the Asset Browser is managed, whereas the *Animation &
Rigging* module deals with the pose library and the other animation-related
functionality.

This Thursday at 18:00 CET/Amsterdam time we'll have the next Animation &
Rigging module meeting (agenda:
https://devtalk.blender.org/t/2022-03-17-animation-rigging-meeting-upcoming/23283).
This would be a great place to discuss this further. You can also find the
module members at https://blender.chat/channel/animation-module.

Cheers,
Sybren