[Bf-committers] NLA Editor / Animation Layers

[Joshua Leung]

Hi Hidde,

On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 4:49 AM, Hidde Jansen <hiddejansen at me.com> wrote:

>

> Is there any chance of a feature like this?

Yes. This is one of the things that I have on my roadmap/plans for the next
2 years or so.

https://code.blender.org/2015/03/animation-system-roadmap-2015-edition/
<--- much of this still stands; the timings may have shifted a bit, but
everything there is still very much planned to happen

When exactly this will happen though boils down to when some of the other
higher priority things (ie. Mostly stuff that is either needed by a lot of
people very often - like drivers setup, action management stuff, exposing
api for animation channel filtering so that it's easier to build tools such
as time line keyframes editing addons, etc.) have been done first.




>
> Would this be difficult to implement?

Let's just say that it isn't as "straightforward" as Grease Pencil editing
tools or the recent Bendy Bones stuff :)

There are 2 main parts to it I think:
1. Setting up a cache per animdata block to keep track of what channels are
animated. This is the main bulk of the work required and is quite tricky
(ie when to update, when to clear, how to handle when there's a gap when
somethings unkeyed,  etc.). It is needed for fixing a few of the jumping
bugs when some channels aren't keyed all the time. And more crucially for
what we're doing, it gives us a way to keep track of the current result of
the NLA stack

2. Knowing the result of the stack, it then becomes easier make a small
change to how the 'add' strips work - we can then basically just subtract
the stack result from the current value to get the required contribution.




>
> I have intermediate programming experience with
> Python, but I'm not very familiar with Blender's API and very little
> experience with C++. I would like to contribute if possible, but I'm not
> sure where to start or of my skills will suffice.


> Either way, thanks for your time and the work you guys do. Blender has
> come a long way over the last few years!
>
> Kind regards,
> Hidde Jansen
>
>
>
> Blenderartists Thread:
>
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?397297-Issues-with-animation-layers&p=3039434
<http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?397297-Issues-with-animation-layers&p=3039434>
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