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  • Published 14 Dec 2024

Speed graph

Would it be possible to add speed graph to graph editor? It's a direct replica from After Effects as it has both - speed graph and value graph which you can toggle. However Blender has only value graph which at point where's too many keyframes becomes real messy.

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Development Status: Open

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tamed
14 Dec 2024

3 Comments

Lauloque

I'd avoid bluntly calling to copy a proprietary software. That's potential for troubles, and in the first place it doesn't make a good feature proposal since it assumes that both community members and developers are already familiar with what you refer too, which you can't guarantee.

See Copyright guidelines for devtalk - Site Feedback - Developer Forum for more context on that.

And we also don't really have to "copy" anything or add new systems, we can also just make our current tools better. Which is also simpler to implement and maintain.

Instead, I would advise you to flesh out your proposal so that anyone can understand the idea and its potential benefits, and developers passing by should also be able to assess its feasibility without needing to conduct extra research.

Start by describing the current need:

  • What’s lacking in Blender? For example, you mentioned the value graph become too cluttered with many keyframes, but can you detail that?
  • How are current solutions falling short? Our current graph already have quite a few ways of filtering keyframes to avoid cluttering, in which way do they not answer your need?
  • What’s the impact? Highlight how this limitation affects your animations or workflow.

Then, outline potential solutions:

  • What feature(s) could solve these specific problems? What it is, what it does, how...
  • Why is it better? Compare the proposed feature to Blender’s current tools, explaining how it would improve usability or outcomes.
  • Integration and usability: Suggest how this could fit into Blender’s existing interface and workflows, perhaps as a toggle in the Graph Editor.
  • Mockups or examples: If possible, create a visual example of how this could look and work in Blender.
3
thorn

AE is not the only application that has speed / velocity curves.

1
tamed Author

Not gonna go through all that to explain one function. Essentially value graph splits into 3 curves for each transformation - 3 for position, 3 for rotation and 3 for scale.

If I decide to animate all of these for a particlular object in Blender then I will get 9 curves in graph editor. I think it is enough to add just two keyframes for that particular object for all transformations - position, rotation and scale and the graph editor window already will look hard to read. Adding more keyframes basically makes value graph very hard to operate in.

However with speed graph I would get 1 curve for each transformation - 1 for position, one for rotation and 1 for scale. And visually that's way managable.

For now my only workaround is to have the particular object that is constrained to bezier curve object with "follow path" constraint. When I set keyframes for "Follow path" value then in graph editor I esentially get one simple curve which sort of works as a "speed graph" from that software that can't be named.