The meeting will be on 2023-09-14T16:00:00Z. It is open for everybody interested to join on Google Meet (link below).
Present: Alexander Gavrilov Brad Clark, Christoph Lendenfeld, Daniel Salazar, Fani-Eleni Pandi, Felipe G, MohammadHossein Jamshidi, Nate Rupsis, Nathan Vegdahl, 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
- Blender Studio released Wing It!
Landed
Names are from the Git log.
- 3a1b8e009bc: Animation: Graph Editor optimize handle drawing (Christoph Lendenfeld)
- a41da206cd6: Fix: Animation Editor snapping not working when using rotate or scale (Christoph Lendenfeld)
- f78ed7b900e: Anim: rename Armature
show_group_colorstoshow_bone_colors(Sybren A. Stüvel) - 59c592f1de3: Anim: remove RNA access to bone groups (Sybren A. Stüvel)
- 1a73039499b: Animation: Scale Average slider for Graph Editor (Christoph Lendenfeld)
- afa8596d21b: Anim: add
bonecollection.bonesRNA collection property (Sybren A. Stüvel) - d3d19e8be93: Animation: Rename “Bake Curve” to “Keys to Samples” (Christoph Lendenfeld)
- 9d65214d5b9: Anim: add notifier
ND_BONE_COLLECTIONfor bone collection changes (Sybren A. Stüvel) - 0ea79698aca: Anim: Add
bone.collections.clear()RNA function (Sybren A. Stüvel) - d64e4a387ac: Fix #111780: bone collections and undo don’t work together (Nathan Vegdahl)
- 8a387d8ed66: Fix: Graph Editor first key handles not drawn (Christoph Lendenfeld)
- 12f8f926b28: Refactor: Rename functions and structs in keyframes_draw.cc (Christoph Lendenfeld)
- 9da88301efe: Fix #100718: NLA Hold Forward Inconsistency (Nate Rupsis)
- 9e5e04e9151: Animation: Rename Graph_OT_sample (Christoph Lendenfeld)
- e656e850a64: Animation: Rename ACTION_OT_sample (Christoph Lendenfeld)
- 614fe73712d: Fix: Wrong operator call in Graph Editor menu (Christoph Lendenfeld)
- 456d65b00a7: Show FCurve modifier toggle widget as ‘inactive’ when there are no modifiers (Sybren A. Stüvel)
Short-term goals / Ongoing Work
- Four high prio reports:
- #110108: NLA Snap to Markers is broken
(Fix) - #112123: Only some vertex weights can be modified via the UI panel (Fix)
- #111553: Blender 4.0.0 - Armature Rig with IK broken (workaround for reported case is available, but might not work for the general case)
- #110946: Normalize Vertex Groups while Armature modifier is hidden (Nate will look into this).
- #110108: NLA Snap to Markers is broken
- Brad: Animation 2025 “Flow state” design roadmap
- Working on streamlining & adding wireframes for animation layers / strips / where keys are.
- Handling feedback from Nathan.
- Working together with Daniel on auto-keying.
- Parts about animation baking are shrinking due to Christoph’s and Nate’s improvements.
- Nathan:
- #111780: Bone collections and bone collection membership are not handled properly when undoing in armature edit mode Landed!
- Discussed with Sybren about a UI/UX for animation layers.
- Wants to work further on #111143: Animation: Graph Editor Handle Selection
- Sybren: #112271: WIP: Bone Collections library override support
- Maybe time to close #99113: Add Selection functionality to weight painting mode?
- Christoph: the last part (vertex loop selection) it’s hard to implement well, given the currently available functionality (basically you need to select an edge, but that’s not available in vertex select mode).
- Felipe & Daniel don’t use selection anyway, they toggle to edit mode for that.
- Module: ok to close this task.
- Felipe: is likely to release the first stable version of ‘non-rigged lines’ today.
- Felipe: how would addons include their geometry node trees in the asset browser?
- Sybren: probably good question for the Pipeline, Assets & IO module.
Patch Review & Decision Time
- Commit message prefix:
Anim:orAnimation:?- Module chooses
Anim:because it’s shorter & leaves more room for actual descriptions. - Nate: document this somewhere?
- Sybren: might be a bit much to document it for all modules, we can at least put this on our module wiki/gitea page.
- Module chooses
- Animator input needed on #111016: Click selecting a keyframe in the Dope Sheet deselects all channels
- Sybren: Selection sync between channels & bones/objects is already tricky, are some issues with it. So prefer a solution that doesn’t change the selection.
- Module agrees: make click-select behave as box-select (i.e. do not change channel selection state).
- Michael Kowalski wants feedback on #111931: USD: Support armature and shape key export
- Sybren will look into this.
- Nate: two NLA issues with autokeying the NLA system itself:
- #76549: NLA Strip influence slider doesn’t respond to autokey correctly.
- #89339: NLA strip’s Influence initial keyframe sets to 0
- Nate: refile these as ‘known issue’, as the new animation system will make this obsolete anyway?
- Sybren & Christoph: yes, let’s do that.
- Nate will update the tags.
Daniel Salazar: proposal for new keying system
- Daniel presented a proposal for a new keying system.
- Complaint: none of Blender’s built-in keying sets are perfect.
- Broad strokes of the proposal:
- Separate the different combinations into various checkboxes, instead of making a long list of all the combinations (and not getting all combinations in there).
- Have separate options for auto-keying and manual keying.
- Skip keying of locked channels.
- Make things configurable in the GUI more, and require less/no Python coding.
- Use presets to save & share configurations.
- Ref: #97886: Keying sets other than Whole Character (or keyframing in general) do not respect channel locks
- Ref: Modules/Animation-Rigging/Weak Areas - Blender Developer Wiki
- Module is positive about the proposal.
- Nathan: Hjalti Hjálmarsson uses custom keying sets to ensure he’s only exactly keying what he wants to key. We should check that the new system can handle such situations.
- Christoph will start a devtalk thread on this subject to get more animator feedback.
- Christoph wants to work on this. targeting 4.1 or later.
Next Meeting
The next meeting will be an off-schedule meeting on Tuesday 2023-09-19T10:00:00Z. 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.