[Bf-committers] SOC Idea -- Animation/Rigging

[Aaron Moore]

Hello Developers,

I am a junior in computer science and I have no experience coding for
blender at this point, thought I've been using blender for 7 years. First,
does my total lack of blender coding experience bar me from involvement in
summer of code? I thought that part of the idea was to break into open
source development... anyway, my idea:

In my time using blender I've seen a lot of amazing stills but not a lot of
amazing animation. Part of this is that rigging and animation require a few
levels more knowledge than creating stills does, and most blender users are
amateur artists. Not many people currently use blender for animation. I
think this situation could be improved if the animation work flow was made
more functional and intuitive.

Here are the problems I've encountered:
  - The IPO window does not allow the viewing of multiple
object/materials/etc.
  - The NLA system does not support the animation of non-armatures
(objects/materials/etc).
  - The lack of a dope sheet editor (though Cessen is currently working on
this)
  - Some pitfalls which hinder the creation of a high quality rig. (this is
particularly important because animation is significantly hindered by the
lack of a quality rig)
      + The lack of ability to have elbow/knee targets for IK chains.
      + Lack of ability to do setup systems of drivers with dependencies,
           1. either through the current ipo driver system because it
doesn't support dependency relationships, or
           2. through the script window because it lacks a event listener
that fires before the window updates, rather than after. (If such an event
listener existed, it would enable complex rigging to be done through the
script window.)
  - Lack of support for multiple armatures to control a single object.

I would like to improve the efficiency of the work flow of the animation
system. Does it sound like there is enough work there to put together a good
proposal? Are these changes that other people want as well? Is anyone
already working on this stuff?

-- Aaron Moore
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