A customizable animation panel for attributes
An interesting thing from maya, it's the attribute panel, that is customizable, and alow the animator to only use what he should use. But editing the panel in maya is a pain. The idea is to create a panel that is customizable in the edition mode of the armature, and shows only attributes that the rigger want the animator to use. It coulb be interesting to lock the edit mode, after the rigging is done, to avoid the animator to mess up with it accidently. The panel should have various inbox type, like checkbox, switch, slidder, textBox selection, etc).
EDIT: split proposals
2 Comments
This is two unrelated suggestions that should be split (it doesn't help to have a topic if the devs can't tell which feature actually attracted the attention)- both of which are very good IMO. The channel box is one of the few Maya UI elements I actually like, and we could do it much better in Blender. I've thought about it a bit, and it can be done with an addon and a clever rigger. I'll be looking into this myself before too long. I'm writing an addon for rigging and this is on my eventually-to-do list.
As for the bones, curves not working as control objects is annoying, but easy to work around by converting the curve to a mesh (still a necessary feature, and a confusing limitation for incoming Maya users). You can change the bone color by putting the bone in a bone group. eventually there will be bone collections, probably not for a few releases, though.
You should choose one topic to keep in this thread and then open another thread for the other one. I'll have some ideas for a 'better channel box' for you then.
EDIT: It looks like Jason beat me to the punch on the multiple proposals thing.
This is multiple proposals bundled into a single post. Please separate them into individual proposals so they can be discussed and voted upon independently.