2024-10-10 Animation & RIgging module meeting

Meetings
1

The meeting will be on 2024-10-10T16:00:00Z. It is open for everybody interested to join the video call (link below).

People present are referred to by first name for brevity. Others are referred to by full name.

Present: Brad Clark, David W, Jeremy Bot, Jorn, Nathan Vegdahl, Nika Kutsniashvili, Sybren Stüvel

Links

Since the Last Meeting / Announcements

  • Slotted Actions are getting very close to moving out of the experimental phase.

Landed

Names are from the Git log. This list is limited to functional improvements & bugfixes.

Blender

Technical Documentation

Ongoing Work

  • High Prio bugs: None!
  • Christoph:
  • Nathan:
    • Nathan’s weekly report
    • Finished updating sequencer, pose library, and Collada import to work with slotted actions.
    • Working on updating the user manual to cover slotted actions (and to cover actions better in general as well, because things are pretty sparse right now).
    • Working with Sybren to prep BConf workshop and presentation.
  • Sybren:
    • Sybren’s weekly report
    • Fixes and tweaks to get the Slotted Actions out of experimental (mostly NLA things).
      • Nika: will there be a guide for add-on devs to upgrade? Sybren: yes. And the existing API should keep working for slotted Actions, just limited to the first slot.
      • Nathan: The old API will be removed in Blender 5.0.
      • Jorn: Will there be a demo/presentation on how to utilise the new slotted action from the blender studio?
    • Working with Nathan to prep BConf workshop & presentation.

Slots explanation in Blender Conf presentation

Sybren: Lie a little (“slots contain the F-Curves”) or be more correct from the get-go (“each slot has channelbag, which contains the F-Curves”)

  • Brad: fine to explain as the “air traffic controller” for the curves
  • Nika: audience? For regular users: go ahead and lie. For developers: be more technical.
  • Jeremy: start with a broad “this thing takes care of that”, and then as understanding deepens, add more detail.
  • Nathan: try it out both ways on people who don’t already know the model, and see which one works better.
  • Sybren: Probably to go with Nika’s approach: start with simple explanation, enough for using the system. Then talk about the future (layers), and then go for the “developer view” and discuss the API changes.
  • Brad: it’s not lying, you’re just not debating what the cow ate and enjoying the sausage.

Brad: at UnrealFest, their demos of where they are going with layered animation is super validating, as they’re doing the same thing we’ve been working towards.

Next Meeting

The next meeting will be on Thursday 2024-10-15T10:00:00Z. Again it will be open for everybody who’s interested. The provisionary meeting agenda will be updated before the meeting.

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