NLA: Simplified UI for Animation Layer Workflow

I agree about the need of Animation Layers, but I'm against using it as a substitute of current NLA. NLA has upsides that in some circumstances are very handy: like having several actions with different length, ability to "blend" actions into one another, duplicate small actions, etc. NLA is a must-have. Animation layers on the other hand should(!) be same length as the action. You can't make one layer "blend" into another one(I mean, you can't make walk "blend" into stand via animation layers). So using animation layers as part of NLA means no NLA, which is pretty bad. Meanwhile, using NLA as animation layers is very non-inuitive and time consuming, as is described in the original post.

What I propose is have animation layers separate to NLA. Animation layers should be a part of action(NLA track). In other words, each NLA track can have Animation Layers: each animation layer same length as NLA track, simplified UI in the N-panel similar to Animation Layers addon.

Below is my experience with Animation Layers and what my arguements are. It is a duplicate of my comment to another very similiar feature-request, so if you've read it - it's the same.

To have artistic freedom, instead of NLA I use Animation Layers addon. It allows for quick and easy addition of layers: additive, replace; and also quick tweaking of "weights" of each layer. It also allows baking some(or all) layers into one. The baking can be either smart(only bake where keyframes are in any of the layers) or brutal(bake every frame). The interface is much simpler than NLA, but in turn - more limited(each layer has exactly same amount of frames as the main). This makes me want to have animation layers on top of NLA, not instead. One of the problems I've met was not being able to easily swap action I'm working on. Also export was a headache. I was able to get rid of those issues by duplicating a rig and model per each action into separate collections. And when exporting, baking "scene" animation to get one action per each exported file. I have to export one animation per file, but otherwise things work fine.

Another problem I've had was unreliability of Animation Layers(or maybe NLA, since it uses it): sometimes additive layers would stop working correctly: when working on an additive layer, the animation would suddenly stop after last keyframe in the additive layer even though it has lots of keyframes in layers below(for example). Reopening same Blender file seems to fix such issues.

Overall, current workflow is workable, but I wish it was in vanilla blender and would fit in better into my workflow. So I want to explain what I mean by that.

How I see it: Animation layers are not a replacement for NLA! Instead it is an option for each NLA track(action). NLA track(or action) should have layers. These layers, unlike NLA, should be exactly same amount of frames as action. Weight of these layers can be tweaked. Layers(or a group of layers) can be baked into one. When exporting - layers of an action are baked into one action.

What this solves:

• easy swap of actions without need of duplicating rig and mesh
• easy export of several actions in one file
• hopefully, no bugs :)

I find NLA editing soooo frustrating, I have to always watch the same tutorial every time I´ll export animation ranges for games. (something I don't do that often).

Yes, the side menu should be better organized, maybe move some of the most used things in the animation layers workflow to the top bar or the right click menu, the dope sheet action editor and the NLA should get more documentation about the animation layers workflow too, maybe a video in the Blender Fundamentals.