[Bf-committers] petition to remove 'protected' layers from armature

[Nathan Vegdahl]

For the record, I don't think I ever requested for protected bones to
be un-transformable.  I could be mis-remembering, of course (maybe I
had a brain fart back then).  But it doesn't provide mcuh benefit to
me as a rigger, and I don't see much benefit to animators, since I can
just put controls on unprotected layers anyway.  I was just relating
what I recalled the justification to be (i.e. a 'safe guard' so that
animators wouldn't transform protected bones expecting them to stick).

And, again, I totally agree with the larger petition as well.

> there could be an additional "do not pose this
> bone" property too for riggers.

I would love to see a more broadly-applicable and finer-grained
property locking mechanism, yes.  But that has little to do with the
issue at hand, I think.

--Nathan


On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 11:05 AM, Ton Roosendaal <ton at blender.org> wrote:
> Hi Nathan & Bassam,
>
> I suggest to bring back how it was in 2.49 then. The feature you
> requested makes sense but it's related to how you designed rigs as
> well. Instead of forcing this as a proxy feature, there could be an
> additional "do not pose this bone" property too for riggers.
>
> -Ton-
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation   ton at blender.org    www.blender.org
> Blender Institute   Entrepotdok 57A  1018AD Amsterdam   The Netherlands
>
> On 1 Jul, 2011, at 0:38, Nathan Vegdahl wrote:
>
>> IIRC the reason for the protected/unprotected distinction is because
>> of the way Blender updates bones in a linked+proxy armature: it
>> completely overwrites the bone, including all pose information.  This
>> doesn't matter for properties/transforms that are animated, since
>> actions are stored separately from the pose bones.  But if a pose bone
>> is moved without being keyed, those transforms are completely lost
>> upon saving and loading the file.  Same with other properties on pose
>> bones.
>>
>> This was extremely annoying on Sintel, for example, when an animator
>> would change an IK/FK slider, or tweak a bone that wasn't animated,
>> and that would be completely lost if they forgot to key it.  So to
>> keep people from shooting themselves in the foot, we made it so that
>> bones on protected layers (e.g. bones that get updated with the linked
>> armature) couldn't be transformed in the first place.
>>
>> I agree that this situation completely sucks and needs to be changed
>> at some point.  Updating of bones in proxy armatures should be more
>> intelligent, instead of just overwriting, or Blender should be more
>> intelligent about preserving changes made to proxy poses/properties,
>> so that we can lose the whole protected/unprotected distinction
>> altogether and have everything Just Work(tm).
>>
>> But just sayin' that it's not a totally trivial change.
>>
>> --Nathan
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 6:13 PM, Bassam Kurdali
>> <bkurdali at freefactory.org> wrote:
>>> Hello
>>>
>>>  Behavior of protected armature layers has changed a couple of
>>> times at
>>> least, to the point where the original design intent is unclear at
>>> best.
>>>  I propose the option be removed entirely, and revert armature
>>> behavior
>>> to that of *protected* layers, as it was in blender 2.49b.
>>>
>>>  Link to bug:
>>> http://projects.blender.org/tracker/?group_id=9&atid=498&func=detail&aid=27501
>>>
>>>  Rationale:
>>> In 2.49 we had a good option and a bad option: good was protect,
>>> bad was
>>> 'don't protect'. As a result, riggers had to click on 'protect' for
>>> every layer in the (proxy) armature. Protect as an option is
>>> effectively
>>> useless, since there is only one real choice. Note that the
>>> behavior of
>>> protection has changed during it's existence even prior to 2.5. I'm
>>> currently unaware of a design document that adequatly specifies what
>>> it's for.
>>>
>>> In 2.5 we have two (in my opinion, and others) bad choices.
>>>
>>> Don't protect: rig changes don't propogate to animators (things like
>>> constraints, drivers, transform locks, bone groups, etc.. the rig
>>> just
>>> breaks) on this layer.
>>>
>>> protect: you can't pose the rig on this layer.
>>>
>>> So what happens if the rig changes? well, you can either:
>>> -delete and remake the proxy
>>> -protect the layer(/s) save the rig, load the anim file, save it,
>>> open
>>> the rig, unprotect...
>>>
>>> BUT: in either case you will lose custom constraints, parenting in
>>> the
>>> anim file... so you are left chosing between not getting rig changes,
>>> losing animation data, or fighting to get both working... given that
>>> production rigs change quite a bit, this is a workflow killer,
>>> especially for a small team.
>>>
>>> I believe the change happened during Sintel, so I'm CCing Nathan to
>>> see
>>> if he has insight into the change. I'm hoping for a small, calm
>>> discussion between those who understand the issues (coders, and
>>> riggers/
>>> TDs in medium to largish projects) to either come up with a good
>>> design/workflow, or just remove the feature.
>>>
>>> PS I was initially going to email Nathan individually, but then
>>> thought
>>> this might just contribute to how opaque this feature has gotten ;)
>>>
>>>
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>>>
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