Move Playhead by Custom Increment
All other software I use has some form of moving the playhead by multiple frames.
Resolve, After Effects, Cavalry, Premiere…
Blender should have a means of moving the playhead in the project by a specific increment using a hot key. The increment could be determined in Preferences or as an exposed attribute on the Timeline.
This could greatly speed up animations where the user knows key frames should be evenly spaced out, and on top of that could also help reduce key framing errors that are off by a single frame due to users manually moving the playhead.
5 Comments
You already can. I have Cntl Left/Right to advance/reverse by 11 frame increments.
Is this in place of the default behavior of moving by a single frame? Or is this in addition to that? I can't find a separate operator.
With how I work I'm always going to want both options at all times. The ability to move by a single frame, as well as by increments of X.
In the keymap editor, under the Frames category, you have four existing entries for the Frame Offset operator.
This operator have a "frame delta" option which lets you chose how many frames it offsets (and direction depending on whether it is a positive or negative delta).
So you could add new entires with your custom delta.
Or, since the "one frame" offset already exists twice, one using the directional arrows AND the other one using ⎇ Alt + 🖱️Wheel Roll , you could also repurpose one of them. That way you still have both without having to make new ones.
Thanks for bringing this issue. This is absolutely fundamental for Animation Workflow!!
I have this exact same notion of yours, and I believe is coming from past experience with other Animation software I have used but I can't truly remember, it just became second nature for me to be able to 'more freely Navigate in the Timeline', that is, to be able to Jump Multiple Frames (Previous/Next) with the Pressing of just one keyboard key. In my experience, in Blender it is actually very frustrating for agile Animation Workflow: having to hover the cursor on the Timeline Area and manipulate the Playback just to be able to Jump Multiple (Previous or Next) Frames at once (on a regular pace that we can only get by default if we accept being stucked with just the default 1 Frame Jumping (Left/Right Arrow Key Shortcut). Note: Sure, we can Jump (Up/Down Arrows) between Key Frames, on certain obscure specifications, and we immediately reach Start or End of Current Frame Range using [ Shift+Left / Shift+Right ] Shorcuts I believe; but the fact is that NONE of these are comparable in life-quality Workflow, of a constant (e.g., 10 Frames) Timeline Frame-Jumping that would be greater than 1 Frame-Jumping.
As a solution, just to reinforce your proposition, I've also conceived a new couple Operators, which would work nearly as the ones of of Up/Down Arrows Keys or Left/Right Arrow Keys, but that we would have a default Frame Jumping Value (such as 5 or 10 Frames), and that would be easily Customizable (Adjust Last Operation Region? Or perhaps in a Menu of the Header Region? In the worst case scenario, in the Preferences).
For the default Keymap, such couple Shortcuts could be as simple as: [ Shift+Up ] & [ Shift+Down ], or maybe [ Ctrl+Left ] & [ Ctrl+Right ] (nor sure which are already in use, so maybe we need to improve this with more intrincated combinations, such as Shift+Ctrl+, Shift+Alt, Ctrl+Alt, Shift+Ctrl+Alt, whatever).