[Bf-taskforce25] Wish list 2.5!

[Joshua Leung]

Hi,

On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Martin Levasseur <martin at servak.com> wrote:

> 1- Keys handling could be a little more intuitive than using B (box) key
> and RMB only.
>
> I'm currently working on facial animation for a character we designed
> with 2.49b. The text that the character is speaking needs to be adjusted
> manually. Everytime the ipo goes from 0.0 to 1.0, a shape key is making
> the lips move. The problem is that I have a long animation to work with,
> which represents thousands of keys to play with. The feature I would
> like to see with IPOs or Graph Editor in 2.5 already exists with basic
> modeling in Blender, it is called "more". You can select a vertex than
> hit select and choose MORE or using CTRL-NUMPAD(+) and it would
> propagate the selection to the vertex connected to the selected vertex.
>
This is easy to add, and can be down pretty quickly. Will put on todo :)



> In IPO mode/ Graph Editor, if implemented, would allow to select shape
> keys as complete curves instead of just a vertex and would allow to
> grab/move the effect and sync it to an audio scrub instead of clicking
> three times, once on peak, once on left, once on right while holding
> SHIFT and then move the curve (and also, with that many keys, it's just
> very difficult to work with).

If you want to select entire curves (as in old IPO editor), just use
Ctrl-Alt-Selectmouse and click on a relevant keyframe. This will select all
the keyframes on the same F-Curve.


I've tried CTRL-NUMPAD(+) and other
> similar keys, but it doesn't work (2.5.alpha included). Also, It would
> be nice to split the occurence of keys temporarily to allow grabbing a
> curve and not grabbing the whole timeline of curves. Let me explain: if
> the character makes an "Ohhh" but does it repeatedly as in "Hello how
> are you today?", I would like to be able to move the "O" in Hello
> independently from the whole, currently if I move "O" I move (grabx) all
> the Os shapes unless I grab the three vertex points that constitute the
> O curve (peak, left, right) in editor mode. Simply put, splitting curves
> as sub-objects in some sort of ANIMATOR MODE, since curves should be the
> basic units, not points. If not, then at least be able to select
> adjacent points as mentioned above would help a lot.
>
I have no idea what you're going on about here, but from the last line, it
sounds like it's just related to the above?

It also sounds to me a bit like you might also consider doing this
lipsyncing via a collection of NLA strips. Set up one action per shapekey,
probably with just a 1-2 keyframes at the maximum influence needed. Then,
add these strips to the NLA editor as necessary - probably with different
phonemes in different tracks, so you can just retime the actions as a whole
(i.e. your "sub-objects") instead of worrying about different bunches of
keyframes ("points")

I'd probably have to finish off NLA-strip baking for this to be really nice
to work with, but you can probably get a lot done this way already.


2- Rendering in background doesn't let us specify size for render to
> override animator/modeler settings.
>
> When we start a render in batch mode on render farm in the background
> which is a great feature, sometimes we forget to hit back 100% size in
> render settings in a blend file and the batch render takes +/- half the
> time to render (yay!) but doesn't have the right resolution (doh!). Then
> merging the PNGs into AVIs we realize the mistake and must re-render
> everything or at least all frames that were rendered at 50%. It would be
> nice to override it in command line like -size 100 then it would be a
> simple script ajustement.
>
Not my area of expertise, but it can probably be done already. Check the
commandline options with -h  or wait for a more informed answer about this
:)



> 3- Sorting "Shape Keys" alphabetically
>
> We have some files that contain 200+ shapes. They are sorted by their
> creation time, not their names (ascending/descending, etc). This makes
> it very difficult to find information. Some sort of sort feature or
> group (by name, by type) would be great instead of scrolling pages of
> shape keys with middle mouse button. I noticed it also applies to
> standard IPO curves (not only shape keys), but maybe 2.5 already has it.
>
This could be done, and may probably be only a matter of coding up a
suitable script that can be run from time to time as necessary. I don't
think it should be something that is done
automatically/behind-the-scenes-on-the-fly since that adds unnecessary
overhead and also frustration when trying to put the curves in a certain
order.

There are advantages to both approaches though, but I admit to having a bit
of a dislike for alphabetical lists (especially long ones), since a list
organised into appropriate sections that follow in some logical/hierarchial
order can be better suited to the job.


Regards,
Aligorith
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