[Bf-taskforce25] defaults & tweaks list

[Brecht Van Lommel]

Hi,

OK, mainly I'm coming from this point of view for simple cases. I was
just playing around with the animation system a bit, keying things from
buttons. If you type in a new value on a keyed property, then most
likely you want that keyed, otherwise you will lose your changes anyway,
so why not do it? One possibility is to only do this for buttons
automatically, since it's a very explicit change anyway, the button
turns into a different color.

On Sat, 2009-07-11 at 14:14 -0400, Jason van Gumster wrote: 
> Brecht Van Lommel <brecht at blender.org> wrote:
> 
> > The only argument, besides standards, that I got from that discussion
> > is that it's useful to not keyframe as a way to undo all changes for
> > that frame and start again. But that can be implemented in other ways
> > too. Maybe it's because the feature works unreliable, or affects
> > unpredictable things in more complicated rigs? Or because it makes you
> > more explicitly aware of what you are keying?
> 
> All of these things are valid reasons. One of the really nice things
> about working digitally is that you don't have to animate in a strictly
> linear fashion. You key the elements you need, when you need them. Then
> you can go in and fill in the blanks. Also, even on simple rigs, if you
> have autokey on by default, then elements of the rig might be keyed
> without your knowledge, making debugging your animation more
> complicated.

> When I animate, I often have situations where I know either the pose I
> want *or* the timing that I want, but not both. This means that I spend
> time moving or rotating elements at frames where I don't want keys...
> or explicitly setting placeholder keys for rough locations, but nothing
> detailed in the pose until later. I also have occasions where I move a
> limb in real time to get an idea of how it moves and deforms the
> mesh... but I don't want to set any keys.

I think this is only true without the "auto key available" option set?
With that option enabled you have to manually key it once first, so
nothing will be keyed automatically, but there will be an automatic
keyframe if it is already keyed. I think the use cases you mention here
would still work as expected?

The last one, moving things temporarily without keying, to test out a
pose, is not as easy, but could be supported by a undo hotkey to undo
all the changes on the frame.

> > I'd like to understand why people prefer manual keying, I haven't
> > found a clear answer to this yet.
> 
> Basically, what it comes down to is predictability and control. When
> you have autokey enabled on a good animation system, you generally have
> a good idea of what's getting keyed and what isn't... but as rigs
> increase in complexity and animation increases in complexity, keeping
> this "good idea" wrapped in your braincase becomes increasingly
> difficult. It's tougher to guess what is and is not keyed... or how to
> fix things when you go back into the animation for refinement. When you
> key manually, you know exactly what gets keyed, and when. It's far more
> predictable and allows flexibility for playing with your animation as
> you go.

OK, so if I understand this correctly, the difference will be that since
you only have to key some property once, you are not continuously
reminded of them by having to insert keyframes manually. One other way
to remind of this would be to show a little message in the to be created
console that something got automatically keyframed, perhaps with a
yellow dot like the button color, to make it clearer what is happening.

Brecht.