NLA track names are needlessly trimmed for short animations

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The name label on NLA strips is trimmed to the length of the strip, making it difficult to read the names on short strips.
I often create 1-frame strips for character poses in game development, using the godot-blender-exporter.
It is difficult to tell which is which in the NLA strip.

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I filed a bug at https://developer.blender.org/T82203, but I was directed here instead since it isn’t a bug. To clarify a few things from my report:

  • 1-frame actions are useful for game development, where you will blend various poses in the editor (e.g. look up/down/left/right)
  • This problem is not exclusive to 1-frame action, it happens whenever you have an action whose length is short relative to the length of its name
  • It seems like you could let the name expand past the length of the NLA strip for readability without negatively impacting the UI

What do folks think? Is there a reason to trim the NLA name to the length of the strip?

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In your case, you can simply zoom the viewport.

It is trimmed so as not to overlap the next one.

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What’s wrong here is that it doesn’t cut well. (@Harleya :wink:)

T82203-2

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Just cutting better at the boundary would make it worse in his (extreme) example of a 1-frame strip. Thinking that we might need a name-shortening function, similar to path-shortening, that removes from center. So “Longname012” goes to “Long…e012”, “Lo…12”, “L…2”, “L…”

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Ah, I didn’t realize that you could have multiple actions in a single row, which is why the trimming didn’t make much sense to me.

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Having the clip name draw better would be good, I am adding this to the NLA roadmap.

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