The meeting will be on 2023-06-22T16:00:00Z. It is open for everybody interested to join on Google Meet (link below).
Present: Brad Clark, Brecht van Lommel, Christoph Lendenfeld, Corrado Piscitelli, Eduardo Rubio, Hjalti Hjálmarsson, Jeremy Bot, Demeter Dzadik, MohammadHossein Jamshidi, Nate Rupsis, Nathan Vegdahl, Nitin Rawat, Paolo Amadini, Sybren Stüvel
People present are referred to by first name for brevity. Others are referred to by full name.
Links
- Google Meet. Note that there are no recordings of the meeting. This way everybody is free to say or show anything.
- A&R Module Meetings agenda for inclusion in your own calendar
- Previous and next meeting notes
- Issues & Pull Requests
- #animation-module chat channel
Since the Last Meeting / Announcements
-
#101218: Selecting bones on linked rig has lag
- Assigned to the ‘Core’ module, as the root cause is in the undo system.
Landed
Blender 3.6:
Blender 4.0:
Short-term goals / Ongoing Work
- #106952: Animation: Butterworth Smoothing filter
- #109015: Animation: Snapping options new GUI
- #106052: Animation: Improve drawing of locked FCurves
-
#108941: Animation: Replacing bone layers + groups with bone collections. Some feedback in the chat thread:
- Removing limitation of 32 layers is nice.
- So is the ability to name layers.
- Unification with Bone Groups is debated.
- Best strategy for choosing bone color when assigned to multiple colored collections is still a question.
- Demeter: ‘bone groups’ is misnomer, is only used for coloring bones. Could also just be a direct property on the bone.
- Sybren: moving from object to armature is ok? Module: yes.
- Demeter: is this a starting point, or a final design?
- Sybren: somewhere in the middle. Code is getting there, we’ll soon have a prototype to play with. Current implementation is intentionally limited to be able to test sooner than later.
-
#106214: Show FCurve modifier toggle widget as ‘inactive’ when there are no modifiers
- Test builds are available.
-
Julien Kaspar is gathering feedback on Blender 4.0 keymap changes (#108791). “Just to recap the animation module feedback so far:”
- The changes seem all for the better.
- The set_weigtht and gradient operators need to be generally improved too.
- The use of
Xfor many operators is excluding future shortcuts for delete/erase operators.
-
#109212: WIP: Animation: At the boundary frame between non-muted NLA strips, evaluate the first frame of the later strip instead of the last frame of the earlier.
- With clips
A=[1, 10]andB=[10, 20], where the numbers are the start & end frames, the question is what should be shown on frame10. Blender currently shows the last frame of stripAthere. - If there are no ‘touching’ strips, the last frame of clip shows the value of that clip (so end frame is inclusive). This makes sense in Blender.
- Other NLAs (Unreal, Unity) are inconsistent in the behaviour, i.e. there’s not a “this is what everybody else does” solutino out there.
-
Paolo’s proposal is, in the above case, to show the first frame of
Bon frame10. - Has some implications when those strips are on separate tracks.
- Sybren: please provide a blend file that clearly illustrates what behaviour will change with your proposal, and which situations will remain the same.
- With clips
Patch Review & Decision Time
-
#108961: Incorrect label for “Only Keyframes from Selected Channels”.
- To decide: proper label & tooltip for the operator.
- Decision: take the same as the ‘selected only’ from the dopesheet / graph editor.
-
#107902: Fix #104054: Symmetrize visible ebones when nothing selected
- Needs rigger feedback
- Demeter: wouldn’t it be better to just disable the operator when nothing is selected?
- Sybren: IMO if it can symmetrize it just should.
- Demeter: it should be consistent with other areas of Blender; ‘delete objects’ also doesn’t do anything when nothing is selected.
- Decision: force selection; use the poll function to entirely disable the operator unless there is a selection.
- Brad: does the selection pick the source or the target bones?
- Demeter: the source bones.
- Brad: that’s opposite of ‘symmetrize weights’, as there you select the part you want Blender to adjust (i.e. the target).
- Sybren: the way this works here makes sense, as the operator can be used generate new bones.
Data Model Exploration v2.0
Nathan presented the current state of exploring a new animation data model (slides).
Workshop Preparation
*Note: due to time constraints the meeting did not cover this part of the agenda. It’s kept here for reference. */
We need to prepare for the animation workshop, which will happen 26-30 June at Blender HQ.
To decide: concrete goal for the workshop. Proposal: to nail the data model.
HackMD has bigger picture with topics for the workshop.
Important questions / topics:
- Where do keys go?
- ‘Declarative’ constraints, space switching.
- How do ‘takes’ work?
- Dynamic Overrides
- How does this integrate with Grease Pencil?
- Multi-data-block animation
- Linking behaviour
- Reusability / layering
Broad planning:
- Monday:
- Starting up
- Confirming the goal of the workshop
- Data model discussion, including some user stories / workflows to support.
- Tuesday: …
- Wednesday: …
- Thursday: Presentation preparation & dinner.
- Friday: 12:00 presentation for all of Blender HQ.
People Involved:
- On location, main crew: Brad, Christoph, Demeter, Hjalti, Nathan, Sybren.
- On location, occasionally: Bastien, Falk
- Some people could remote in? Who? When?
- MHJ, Nate in later half of the day
Next Meeting
The next meeting will be on Thursday 2023-06-29T16:00:00Z. Note that this overlaps with the workshop, and will likely be used to show the progress of the workshop so far.
Again it will be open for everybody who’s interested. The provisionary meeting agenda will be linked in the #animation-module channel before the meeting.