UI & workflow techniques in (Digital Audio Workstations) as useful source for inspirations/innovations in Blender's UI(Rigging)
Hello guys. I am interested in learning rigging, although I have not started to research and study about it yet I would like to ask what do you think about blender taking some ideas and inspirations from other field of art. This time it will be about music. Lately I have been trying to learn more about working with these digital audio workstations(DAW). The community is vast and you can learn so much from it.
I have observed how tricky it would be to think how easy it is for a music in your mind can be translated into reality with the help of some software that will relay it you digitally. But innovation grows decades by decades the modern DAWS have a lot of thing to offer that older musicians would not even thought of.
Rigging in animation involves a lot of technicalities of how dynamics, timing, and motion works. These things are not new to audio production/mixing the only difference is the subject but most of the elements of rigging and audio mixing are somewhat related and not to far from each other.
The main purpose of this post is to make a suggestion for the blender developers if possible they would give a look on how DAWs work. The basics would be enough for them to possibly be inspired of how audio mixing workflows and plugin implementations might work inside blender especially in the realm of animation.
Because I am still a newbie in this area of blender, I cannot pin point how helpful this would be but I just would like to bring it out in the forum maybe the blender team might be interested in learning some of the procedures, methods, techniques, and even UI designs that might be useful and instrumental for blender.
One Idea I could think of is to have a single set of rigged movements and be activated by a single button and also a feature that would implement a function to the rigs or bones that would make the connected meshes and bones be influenced or affected by a specific programmed rig. Interpolations and hierarchy transform can also be used in the program.
Top DAWS in the industry
- Logic Pro X
- Pro Tools Expert
- Studio One
- Ableton
- Cubase Pro
Digital Audio Workstation Basics/Everything you need to know
youtube.com/watch
List of some of the common tools used in a DAW:
1.) Arpeggiator
An arpeggiator is a feature found on many synthesizers, vintage and modern, hardware and software. Often referred to simply as an “arp”, it lets you play a string of notes via a single key press or a single played chord.
workflow demo: youtube.com/watch
2.) Digital Oscillator -
Similar to an analog oscillator (Voltage Controlled Oscillator) but adopted in a digital environment.
Voltage Controlled Oscillators (commonly referred to as VCOs) are used in synthesizers to convert a DC signal from the power supply into an AC signal, where the signal then oscillates at a certain frequency, generating a sound. The frequency of a VCO can be adjusted via input voltage or current modulation.
workflow demo: youtube.com/watch
3.) Synthesizer
A synthesizer or synthesiser (often abbreviated to synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals that may be converted to sound. Synthesizers may imitate traditional musical instruments such as piano, flute, vocals, or natural sounds such as ocean waves; or generate novel electronic timbres.
workflow demo:
youtube.com/watch
4.) UI and plugin setups
All genres of music are taking advantage of the uses of these modern DAWS, one good example is the industry of r&b beats.
youtube.com/watch
youtube.com/watch
5.) Additional tools from other rigging softwares that might be useful for blender:
Dedicated controllers/pickers
Dedicated transform widgets
Akeytsu rigging software review youtube.com/watch
This vision might be too deep to grasp right now but as time goes by there is a great probability that we would start to notice how some of the things in blender can benefit from how the DAW system works.
Big respect to the entire Blender team.
Thanks.
9 Comments
Are you asking for new audio features? If so, you should use the free-and-open-source Ardour software, it's a great DAW and it can seamlessly integrate with Blender via JACK audio.
If this post is about rigging features... I really can't understand what you're asking for. But many of the things you've pictured or described are already easily doable in Blender. For example:
This is called the Action Constraint. You can also use Drivers to control a rig or constraint.
Rigging is my favorite 3D job, so I'm always eager to see new rigging ideas and features. I'm actually writing an addon that builds on Blender's rigging features. That being said, it isn't clear what you're asking for here.
* @Josephbburg * I hope you won't vote it down without reading the whole composition. This is not even a DAW version proposal of some kind. If you read the title again I believe you would somehow get what I mean.
* @Josephbburg * Action constraint is a good tool but I don't believe it works the same as what I have explained in my statement above. This is more about like a button that can be enable/disabled like playing a single layer of track/instrument. You can then overlay it with another set of rigging animations that cab also be paused/play similar to how DAWs organize and run the individual tracks. This is not entirely about a specific proposal but a broad suggestion for the development team. I would like to introduce to them the UI and workflow dynamics/techniques that might be useful and helpful for optimizing some of the tools and features that blender mainly is built for and not necessarily suggesting it to be a DAW.
I read the whole post. It doesn't explain how a rig is like a DAW. Now what you're describing sounds like the NLA editor (in Blender) or animation layers (in Maya).
This is exactly, specifically what this website is not for, though. This website is about writing specific proposals to tackle specific problems. With mockups of exactly how they would look in the UI of Blender .
* @Josephbburg * I also said that this is more of a suggestion to the blender developers. I have not necessarily proposed something definite but a broad sense of recommendation that the developers might personally see some useful ideas that other applications that are not again necessarily in thrle realm of 3d animations and rigging softwares.
The principle is similar to or in a sense the same with how other technologies are inspired from different things that are already around us. Like building with some functionalities inspired by nature, where they take a termites home as a source of their technologies idea/innovation.
On the other hand I was thinking maybe some experienced developers might get some inspirations or additonal ideas where they can translate the ui dynamics,workflow, techniques from a different category of art which is the audio mixing in this situation, into the teritory of 3d en ironment which also in this case, Blender.
I believe this place can also be an avenue to share some ideas, thoughts that might give the developers some additional diversity of innovative source/ inspiration. Not by a fix definition that you just have to post something definite and determined.
From the site description:
And take a look at this: youtu.be/o4BTL_tLzcs (18:30 to 24:00; it's a presentation by the moderator of this site about how not to write an RCS post).
* @Josephbburg * With all due respect dude. You are taking what he said out of context. I already saw that video and I know what he means. I already posted a lot of request/proposal that are more specific and defined because they are a different type of post. This one is also a sort of proposal but a on a different purpose and mainly just to give the blender developers a heads up or recommendation that there are great softwares out there(In a broad sense) that might be useful for harnessing ideas/innovations. As I have formatted the post above. I never meant to point out specific areas or UI that they should follow but I was just recommending that the DAW environment may have some things that might interest them not necessarily all of them but some of them might. Just because he said that, that doesn't mean you can't suggest something on a broader scope of things. All of this is mainly just to create a conversation that might lead to some better ideas. It will be a hindrance for blender's faster improvement and possible new innovations if the environment that you are pushing is on some kind obligatory format to make every post more define or faricated in a final way. Sometimes you got to start extensively, draw from conventional perspective to able to arrive on an unconventional concept that some of us might have overlooked otherwise. How can they get how these foreign things work if I instantly propose something that they are not even aware of or familiar?
I hope atleast you get what I am trying to point out. We should not be limited in our own aveneus but sometimes we need to wonder a bit to see, that we may further grow our landscape/viewpoint for a better and much greater potential.
* @johnpdelacruz26 * To be clear, while this post of yours may have a nugget of inspiration for someone out there, it's not the kind of thing that this site is built for. If you want DAW-like tools in Blender, then you need to be very specific about where you think that user interface paradigm would be useful in Blender and how it would work. Screenshots to a bunch of other programs simply isn't going to cut it.
* @Jason van Gumster * Sorry man. I may have failed to explain my post clearer. I think I should have posted in blender today instead. The main focus is to create a conversation about the workflow and techniques in DAWs that might be adoptable in blender. Mr.josephburg might be right. I might try to do a much clearer composition this time posting in blender today.