[Bf-animsys] William - NLA Tests Vid (2009 June 10/11)

William Reynish william at reynish.com
Fri Jun 12 16:35:12 CEST 2009


On 12 Jun, 2009, at 8:50 AM, Nathan Vegdahl wrote:

> Regarding the tweak mode:
>
>   I don't think the issue is that you have to hit tab to tweak a
> strip.  Personally, I think that's fantastic, and mirrors really well
> "edit mode" for objects, as well as keeping things clear to the user
> as you said.

Hmm, maybe, but the confusing thing is what happens when you're not in  
'edit mode' and insert keyframes. Apparently, this automatically  
creates a new action above all others in the NLA. To move that action  
clip around you have to freeze it. This is really confusing IMO -  
Blender shouldn't assume to create actions without user input.  
Instead, Blender should always have an active action, one where new  
keyframes go.  This active action can be any action the user has  
created, or a new one.

I see the 'Edit Mode' feature more like 'Make Local' in the 3d View.  
You use it to focus on one action, undisturbed by other actions. It's  
a little weird if it's the only way to get at actions, at the very  
least because, as you say, actions can be used for so many things.

>   Rather, the issue is that when you specify a strip to be tweaked
> (by hitting tab), you can no longer select and move around other
> strips until you exit it.  In other words, it blocks the NLA
> interface.
>
>   Perhaps, instead, hitting tab can be more like "marking" the strip
> to be tweaked, rather than entering a mode?  That way it doesn't block
> the rest of the NLA interface.

Right. But then again then why have that edit mode at all ? ;) Why not  
just have an active action ID browser in the dopesheet to select the  
action you want to work on. This is where new/tweaked keyframes go.

Of course the NLA controls what you actually *see* , because  
everything is piped through the NLA. If you want to see the current  
action undisturbed by NLA stuff, it'd be useful to have a 'Make Local'  
button (or even Mute Unselected - hotkey can be '/' to be consistent  
with 3D view). This would be more useful than an edit mode, because  
it's non-blocking.

The difference between this and the current NLA branch is this:

-no manually jumping back and forth to edit actions or NLA strips
-user seamlessly works on both actions and NLA
-user can immediately see the 'result' of the action changes made in  
context, instead of having to switch modes to actually see how the  
action looks when combined in the NLA editor
-replace Edit Mode button with Mute Unselected to see current action  
as-is, undisturbed by other strips in NLA.

>   On a somewhat related note, I'm curious if you have any ideas for
> how to deal with actions that aren't represented as strips in the NLA
> editor?
>   For example:
>
>   1. Bob is creating a library of actions to be used by a crowd-sim
> script he wrote.  While he could put these actions on the NLA editor
> as strips in order to work with them, this seems rather clumsy.
>
>   2. Jerry is creating and editing actions that are used only for
> action-constraints in a rig.  Again, he could line them up in the NLA
> editor, but this seems clunky and a bit ill-suited to the task.
>
>   3. Barbara has already created some actions in another file and she
> appends them into the current file.  She now wants to add them to the
> NLA as strips, even though they are not already represented there.

Actually I don't think this is so much of an issue. Luckily I think  
it's a misinterpretation to say that all management of actions happens  
in the NLA. The Action Editor (hidden inside Dopesheet) still has an  
active action, currently stored in ID blocks. The confusing and  
annoying part is that the NLA seems to automatically add new actions  
when not in Edit Mode. Plus, I'm really not keen on the whole 'freeze'  
workflow - to me an action is an action, and having to freeze it to  
put it in the NLA editor seems unnecessary. Of course you need to add  
or remove clips, but that's slightly different IMO.

Tha NLA is used for managing clips (clips=actions instantiated in NLA  
editor) however, and I think that's fine.


>
>   Mostly what I'm thinking here is that actions have a lot more
> potential uses than only NLA mixing.  And right now it feels like the
> NLA editor is becoming an interface not just for mixing actions, but
> also for creating/managing them.  But creation and management of
> actions is relevant to use-cases outside of the NLA editor.
>   Certainly it's useful to have some overlap here, but I wonder if
> maybe it's a bad idea to combine mixing and managing too much, in the
> same way that combining mixing and editing turned out to be a bad idea
> in the 2.4x NLA interface.  Maybe there needs to be a separate
> interface to take over the primary creation and management of actions?
>
> --Nathan V
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-animsys/attachments/20090612/89d73270/attachment.html>


More information about the Bf-animsys mailing list