[Bf-committers] Re: [Bf-blender-cvs] CVS commit: blender/source/blender/blenkernel BKE_global.h blender/source/blender/blenkernel/intern ipo.c scene.c blender/source/blender/blenloader/intern readfile.c writefile.c blender/source/blender/include BSE_time.h BIF_resources.h BIF_spacetypes.h BSE_drawipo.h BSE_headerbuttons.h ...

[Matt Ebb]

Note: I'm answering a bunch of emails at once, copied from the HTML  
archives - my domain has gone to hell and I've been plunged into an  
email black hole for the next week or so. I'm immensely busy right now  
and don't have much time to keep checking the ML archives, so if anyone  
wants to make sure a message gets through, they can use mattebb (at)  
optusnet.com.au. thanks!

On 6 May 2005, at 3:19 AM, Ton Roosendaal wrote:

> ton (Ton Roosendaal) 2005/05/05 19:19:21 CEST
>
>  Log:
>  Added the new Timeline Window, copied from Tuhopuu, coded by Matt Ebb.

Oh, that's a surprise! I didn't expect to see this added now. Thanks.  
Credit is also due to Jiri, who helped with a lot on this too.

By the way, there's also more tasty info in the original t3 commit logs:
http://projects.blender.org/pipermail/tuhopuu-cvs/2005-February/ 
001309.html
http://projects.blender.org/pipermail/tuhopuu-cvs/2005-February/ 
001313.html

>   - Add time markers with MKey

You're also supposed to be able to add markers in real time quickly  
with M during animation playback as well, but it seems it hasn't been  
included in bf. I realise my code for doing this may be a bit dodgy,  
but this functionality is absolutely *crucial* to the whole point of  
markers, and it really must be included somehow.

Also related to this, I added the ability to right-click within  
animation playback to cancel out of it, which is consistent with other  
'temporary modes' in Blender and is a nice quick alternative to having  
a stop button in the timeline. Please consider this one, too.


There are also a few other WIP things that should really be fixed up  
before release:

* Support for visualising more Ipo types than just Object and Action -  
Material Ipos were very important to me, but I couldn't figure out how  
to implement it myself

* Better feedback for the 'record mode' - the little red button really  
isn't enough, it could be potentially easy to forget about it and end  
up with horrible keyframes everywhere after you've been editing for a  
while. I thought of slightly tinting the entire timeline red when  
record mode is on, to make this a bit more obvious, but got sidetracked  
with other things before implementing :)

* A hotkey for 'record mode'. Fabrizio suggested Caps Lock (which would  
be very cool - like a little "on air" light :) but although caps lock  
seems to be defined in the source, it wouldn't work for me here.

* Python access to the markers and their names. This would be excellent  
for lipsync import scripts, and having this at the release would allow  
people to start working on these immediately.


And a todo list for the future, maybe if they seem easy, someone might  
want to take a crack at these too? :)

* 'Snapping mode' - when dragging the time slider back and forth, it  
would snap to markers and keyframe lines when it's within a few  
pixels/frames of them. This could be either a space setting or a  
modifier key while the mouse is held down (Ctrl?).

* Moving markers with G or mouse drag

* Extend the record mode to work for sliders and number fields as well  
(eg. for material ipos)

* Perhaps tooltips when the mouse is over the keyframe lines, giving  
info like the Ipo name, or for Material and Texture Ipos, what  
material/texture channel it is.

>   Notes about the implementation in Tuhopuu:

Thanks for cleaning all that up! I'm not precious about my code - as a  
general note to anyone: feel free to correct any code I've written as  
long as the user functionality is still there. But if possible I'd  
appreciate a note explaining how and why, so I can learn from it :)


Alexander said:
> Doesn't sound very good UI-wise. I would propose SHIFT-A, like in other
> spacetypes.

Well to split hairs, Shift A is generally used for adding 'big things'  
like datablocks. This is on a much smaller scale, more on a UI level,  
so I don't think it's inconsistent. In any case, the major reason for M  
is to keep it a nice simple single hotkey, so it's fast and easy to  
drop markers during playback for animation timing purposes. This is how  
it works in most video editing software and it's great.

> >  - CTRL+M gives option to name Marker
>
> Doesn't sound good, either. I would propose N.

That could work, though the reason Ctrl M was originally chosen is to  
keep it tied to the 'markers' concept, since there are other things in  
there that could potentially be named, like Ipos. But not a big issue  
to me, really, if there's an overwhelming number of people against it,  
change it.


Then later, Ton said:
> Better would be to define what exactly the Markers are useful for... in
> Tuhopuu they didn't do anything even... just 'marking'. :)
> I've added pageup/pagedown to move current frame to the markers...
> maybe that already was out of the scope of the intended functionality?
> Probably Matt will have a say on this topic first.

We had some discussions on this on the tuhopuu-devel mailing list. Here  
are a couple that describe how I feel about the scope of it all:

http://projects.blender.org/pipermail/tuhopuu-devel/2005-March/ 
001181.html
http://projects.blender.org/pipermail/tuhopuu-devel/2005-March/ 
001158.html


Cheers,

Matt