I think your troubles stem from a misunderstanding of the data model. It’s equally simple to switch the Action and Slot of an NLA strip, but you have to do that on the actual NLA strip.
Your questions are basically answered by the Python API documentation, and the example code in the 4.4 release notes. For more help with the API, please poke me in the #animation channel on Blender Chat. That way this thread is less about solving this specific issue for you, and can be more about collecting feedback on slotted actions in general.
You can, in the Action editor. There slots can be renamed and removed, just like any other channel in the channel list. You’re right in that they’re not displayed in the Outliner yet.
I can’t assign one animation to multiple objects at once. Thus, if earlier I had to select an object and assign an animation, now the path has become longer. I now need to select I need to select an object then an animation and another slot.
First you say you can’t assign at all, but then you say you can, but it just takes one step more. Which one is it?
When exporting to fbx, only one slot is displayed, and it is not clear how to choose it. My last task was to animate groups of people communicating. They have the same rig and mash. How should I organize my work?
I don’t know much about the FBX add-on, except that it’s quite complex code. I wouldn’t be surprised if it still only uses the first slot in each Action. If you feel that there’s a bug in there (like not supporting slotted Actions properly), please file a bug report.
Export errors when exporting a collection with two rigs. And exporting them separately led to different results.
Don’t keep errors to yourself, please file a bug report. Be sure to include the exact error messages you see, and an as-simple-as-possible example file which can be used to reproduce the issue.
Conclusion: Everything was complicated for me. And the slots didn’t help in any way.
I’m sorry to hear that.
For example, I animate a rider on a horse. These are two armatures that interact. I’m doing gait and attack animations. When switching to gait animation, it would be great to have the two armatures switch to the desired animation.
This I mentioned explicitly in my original post, under “What does not happen?”. The work to get this streamlined is tracked in #133725: Anim: switching assigned action on multiple data-blocks together. If you want to help out, please join the design discussions, and maybe the module meetings.
It’s not? If I understand correctly, it’s about exposing material properties from outside the material node-tree, but making it so you can change (and, I asume, animate) those properties from the material properties instead of the node-tree. The idea is to treat materials like GN modifiers: only the Group inputs get exposed to the outside.
Please keep this thread on topic. This is to help the development of Blender by giving feedback to developers, not to ask for help using Blender yourself.
Item 1 and 2:
I found out how to delete slots. But this is not at all an obvious way. Also, why do I need all the slots for an object (armature) in the Action Editor list if I choose only one for animation? In the drop-down list, it is clear. In the “Summary” list with animation channels for an object, in theory, there should only be an active slot. After all, I can’t mix two slots in one action.
3 and 4. For the gaming industry, fbx is the main way to transfer animation to the engine. And if it doesn’t work properly, then users will either have to look for some workarounds, or refuse to use the program.
As far as I understand, slots are important for motion graphics. And that’s cool. But I would like other directions not to be forgotten.
I often have to animate paired characters. For example, a rider on a horse. The rider can change. And I expected that the slots are needed so that I can choose one action and the necessary slots would be applied to both the skeleton of the horse and the skeleton of the riders I create for it.
Another example: there is a map with many groups of people on it. In fact, they all have the same rig. For example, a tent with goods that has a seller and buyers (7 people). I used to call the animation like this: tent_seller, tent_supper-A, and so on. I expected that the slots would be selected automatically when I choose the tent action, and if I choose another action, the slots for the rest of the characters would be selected automatically. And, of course, I could easily pass all this to the Unity engine via fbx. But…
I use an automatic translator, so I’m sorry if something isn’t very clear.
That’s what the “only show slot of active object” filter option is for.
After all, I can’t mix two slots in one action.
Slots are not meant for mixing. That’s currently what the NLA is for, and what in the future “action layers” will be for.
For the gaming industry, fbx is the main way to transfer animation to the engine. And if it doesn’t work properly, then users will either have to look for some workarounds, or refuse to use the program.
Or acknowledge that this is Open Source, and actually help with the development. There’s a lot of smart developers in the game industry.
As far as I understand, slots are important for motion graphics. And that’s cool. But I would like other directions not to be forgotten.
I am an animation noob, but in a recent project I had to create some animations and precisely slots were useful to coordinate the parts of an animation to be reused that involved several objects. My only feedback is what has already been stated in the proposal: the NLA is clearly not made for them and a proper tool will be needed. Currently if I want to arrange an action with three coordinated slots, I need to set up three channels/clips/tracks/whatever was the name (one per object), set each object at a different slot, and manually sync these channels. Since slots help group several sources into an action, I hope there will be some editor where the action is placed, and then the slots are given data to animate, rather than the opposite at happens in the NLA editor. And of course there should be the possibility to assign no objects to a slot or even several objects to a slot. I guess internally this will work in whatever way.
The process of assigning new slots of the desired type to an existing action was quite painful but this also seems to be already acknowledged.
Please don’t repeat what’s already stated. As I said in the intro post, just press the icon on posts that you agree with. It’ll be a lot easier to gather feedback that way.
icon on posts that you agree with. It’ll be a lot easier to gather feedback that way.