2024-10-15 Animation & RIgging module meeting

[Cessen]

The meeting will be on 2024-10-15T10:00:00Z. 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: Christoph Lendenfeld, Hjalti Hjálmarsson, Nacho de Andrés, Nika Kutsniashvili, Nathan Vegdahl, Pablo Fournier, Rik Schutte

Links

• Video Call. Note that there are no recordings of the meeting. This way everybody is free to say or show anything.
• A&R Module Meetings calendar for inclusion in your own calendar
• Previous meeting notes
• Issues & Pull Requests
• #module-animation chat channel
• Draft agenda for any upcoming meetings

Since the Last Meeting / Announcements

• Devtalk: Upcoming Blender 5.0 Release & Compatibility Breakages
  • Blender 5.0 milestone
  • #119626: Breaking Animation API changes
• Planning to remove the experimental flag on slotted actions for Blender 4.4 alpha this week (probably later today, depending on how things go).

Landed

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

Blender

• f4f3158a10b: Fix: Anim, restore missing automatic F-Curve groups (Sybren A. Stüvel) (2024-10-11)
• 86249a62168: Anim: Implement cycle-aware keying for Slotted Actions (Sybren A. Stüvel) (2024-10-11)
• ee3aea4cafd: Anim: When assigning an Action, auto-assign slot if it was never used (Sybren A. Stüvel) (2024-10-11)
• 76bddb41df7: Anim: Fix NLA Strip Action assignment (Sybren A. Stüvel) (2024-10-11)
• 5cdb950befa: Anim: Fix pose library flipping with slotted Actions (Sybren A. Stüvel) (2024-10-14)
• ab1cd6f2237: Anim: also copy tmp_slot_handle and tmp_slot_name on liboverride apply (Sybren A. Stüvel) (2024-10-14)
• bb310831b80: Anim: don’t depend on space data pointer when unassigning Action (Sybren A. Stüvel) (2024-10-14)
• 975b5f4533d: Anim: invert Action editor ‘Show All Slots’ filter flag meaning (Sybren A. Stüvel) (2024-10-14)
• 989634c0a11: Fix: handle embedded IDs when upgrading to slotted actions (Nathan Vegdahl) (2024-10-15)

Ongoing Work

• High Prio bugs:
  • #128519: Regression: Pasting pose on liboverride armature produces warning about ‘removing all override data’
• Christoph:
  • Christoph’s weekly report
  • Working on bug fixes for 4.3.
• Nathan:
  • Nathan’s weekly report
    • A little additional work on Action documentation in the user manual.
    • Mostly worked on helping to test Sybren’s #128889 PR in preparation for landing.
    • Now returning to documentation again.
    • Will also be working with Sybren & Christoph to continue preparations for the workshop and BConf presentation.
• Sybren:
  • Sybren’s weekly report
  • #128889: Anim: Remove ‘Slotted Actions’ experimental flag
• Animator meeting at Blender HQ, with Rik Schutte, Hjalti Hjálmarsson, and Pablo Fournier:
  • None this week due to off schedule module meeting.

Help Needed

• Please test and report issues with slotted actions:
  • Opening old files and testing playback.
  • Creating some quick new animations, to make sure your workflows still work.
  • Testing out library linking and overrides involving actions (directly or indirectly).
  • Port your addons and Python scripts to the new Slotted Action APIs.
    • This isn’t necessary to keep them working thanks to the backwards-compatible API, but…
    • We would appreciate experience-based feedback on the new APIs.
    • And if you want your addon/script to fully work with Actions that have more than one slot, you’ll need to do this anyway.

Next Meeting

Next week’s meeting is cancelled due to Blender Conference.

The next meeting will be on Thursday 2024-10-31T17:00:00Z. Again it will be open for everybody who’s interested. The provisionary meeting agenda will be updated before the meeting.