[Bf-funboard] Armature Comments

[Thoenes, Michael A]

First off I have many praises for the new armature system.

1. Ability to stay in pose mode - Awesome
2. Manipulator Widgets with Global, Local, Normal, View, Excellent
3. New bone drawing Modes - Nice
3. Speed of System - great improvement

Secondly - A couple of suggestions I feel would improve character
animation work flow. 

1. Ability to assign widget style per bone - for instance, Ability to
assign IK handle on wrist to always be in  translation mode. Assign FK
head to always be in Rot Manipulator mode when selected. Perhaps this
could be an override button in the bones edit menu... 

2. Ability to view waveform in Action Window and Timeline window -
(Right now I keep the sound window open and use that)

3. Ability to set markers in Action Window.

4. Ability to change individual bone draw modes (perhaps using primative
shapes) to help rapidly identify control objects.
  
5. "Key all" button in Action Window - Ability to set a Key for all
bones currently in action window list, Rel Keys - same thing.... (this
is useful for full keying pose to pose character aniamtion - currently
I copy/drag a base set of keys over and modify them)

6. Easier way to select entire column of Keys in Action Window. Often I
have more keys than fit on the screen vertically. 
- B-Keying in the lower frame bar works but I rarely get it first try..
This get tedious.. Not sure what the answer is here. 

IMHO character animation has become much eaiser in Blender than ever
befor... Great work for those who have coded all the new features - some
of which I am sure I have not explored. If you would like me to post
some screen shots from these application I have referred to, I have C4D
8.5, Softimage 4.2 and Motionbuilder 5.5 available to me.

mthoenes