Animation Layers
I would love to see animation layers implemented.
A flexible animation layering system where you can add additive or absolute animation layers.
My personal favorite/ sytem is 3DS Max - CAT - animation layer system, just as an example...
Any development on this side?
18 Comments
Lets face it NLA sucks. Add an animation layers system like Maya have it works well its super intuitive and with great power.
I've just recently had the need for this, so +1. The current way to do this is destructive and doesn't really work as one would expect: -You take the original animation, drop it to the NLA and create a new empty "tweak action" above it. -Set this new animation to the same length as the original one. -Now, you would expect to be able to offset the existing motions, but the NLA track blending modes just mess whatever you do so you end up having to re-animate anything you wish to tweak completely (say, for example, the height of the hips in a walk cycle). -Then, if you want to "apply" your changes you have to bake the whole thing, ending up with an awful lot of unnecessary keyframes. Same happens with things like the envelope modifier, you cant just "apply" it.
Hope this little rant helps clarify what's needed for animation layers: a way to non-destructively "offset" existing animations and a way to apply the changes without having to bake a new animation.
Thanks for bringing the subject :)
I find the NLA editor not to be very straight forward if you just need to add additive animation to an existing animation. Animation layers would allow to just add new layers of animation - additive or override (absolute) layer for example - an see the result imediatly without having to take the extra steps of going into the NLA editor - adding the strips, position them etc . Also, with layers you could add some additive animation for one or several limbs and then set the percentage to a lower value (in case you need it). Another feature ist to collapse several layers into one single layer. Color coding the layers - you would know wich layer is now active for the all character or just single limbs. If you have a minute have a look at this sort videos for better understanding:
youtube.com/watch
youtube.com/watch
A workflow like this is a huge time saver in a production environment.
Looking forward to your comments
Thanks,
This is a great clarification, but it's pretty essential for a feature as big as this one for you to address how the workflow would work in Blender . Would it require a new edit area or could these features be added to the NLA (or perhaps another editor)? How would you design animation layers to augment what's already possible in Blender?
I am afraid i cannot answer to that question just beeing an animator and having very few understanding over the technical necessities. Did you take a look at the videos for better clarification? As far as i know animation layers do not exist in Blender. The NLA editor is more of a non linear editor (as the name already says). You can use it to layer animations as a work around, but its time consuming and less straight forward then the approach in the videos.
NLA is short for Non-Linear Animation. The NLA Editor is meant to give a lot of the features you'd expect in animation layers, but it does fall short on a number of those features.
The point of this site is to propose features in such way that they can actually be actionable... that developers can both have a firm understanding of the desired feature and an idea of how it might be implemented in Blender. The idea isn't to make this a dumping ground for "wouldn't it be nice" ideas, but really flesh them out and think about how it might work.
As an animator, you don't necessarily need to know the technical necessities. You just need to know how Blender currently works and describe how you would like Blender to be modified to introduce/improve animation layering.
Yes, thats why i posted the links to the videos. Even if it is another software the implementation in blender could work in a similar way as shown.
But (IMHO), this proposal really could use more. This is a big feature and its implementation requires some serious thought about design. Like I asked before, do you want to extend the NLA? Replace it? Add a new editor altogether?
The layers should work independently from the NLA editor. A new editor for animation layers would probably be necessary. Some weeks ago i had writen Ton Roosendaal about this issue - he answered " I got curious a bit, and it seems like a very nice simple to use feature. Blender has NLA strips to do this, but the editing process for this is very clumsy."
* @Jason van Gumster * I think ... The animation layer and NLA should be different things. NLA can trim the animation. The animation layer is convenient for animators to edit and modify the animation. The animation layer should be based on a single bone. Add only necessary keyframes when collapsible and collapping.NLA is more macro, and the animation layer is more micro and detailed.
The current NLA does pretty much the same than animation layers. In addition, you even can fade between animations, repeat cycles...
I'm not aware what kind of workflow you need animation layers for but I think NLA should do the work. Take a look to this tutorial: youtube.com/watch Is this what are you looking for?
It's not particularly helpful to make a proposal that says "make this feature from X other program." Not all other users and developers are going to have the same experiences you have with other applications. It would be best if you could explicitly describe how the feature would work in Blender and how it differs from existing features in Blender.
And to be even more easy to understand, it's strongly advised that you include mock-up images showing how you envision the feature looking in Blender and how the workflow might be for using it.
I'd love that as well. The new addon is great and it can be much improved on.
will the paint brush icons be updated the ones for add , subtract draw ect?
Any news on this? From what I can tell after a few hours of searching animation layering is still not a thing in Blender. Unless you count chaining everything up to control-bones in 1 armature only created for control objects as then you only have 1 object that has animation so the NLA and Action Editors work perfectly fine.
But for me Animation Layering seems like such a nobrainer. Would put an "animation layer" selection box for the timeline bar and (not so) simply store every keyframe together, all strips, everything. You could add or delete, hide and unhide animation layers, with all their keyframes separated. Maybe with an "add new layer from mix" akin to Shapekeys. As someone who has barely any idea what Blender's code looks like this sounds very easy to do which is why I'm betting it's not.
But overall just keeping the flames lit I guess. While searching it became pretty obvious that this function is not just our David's desire but basically one of the most sought-after features for animators. Yes, there are workarounds but most of them make a mess of things one way or another.
I’m working with motion capture data at the moment and would love to see if we would be getting any Animation Layer support anytime soon. Not sure if anyone heard anything.
Currently, the NLA “Add” blend mode doesn’t seem to work well when I change my animation in the viewport. For example:
if I animate a box rotating to 20 degrees and push that down to a layer, I then adjust the box to 40 degrees on the active layer, but after I keyframe it, it actually jumps to 60 degrees. I know why this happens, I'm actually adding the 20-degree keyframe to the 40-degree keyframe, but that is very counter-intuitive. It would be better if the system actually knows that I'm trying to get to 40 degrees and only adds a 20 degree offset.
Is there a way to get a quick fix by adding an "additive offset" blend mode, where it takes the difference from the previous layer cumulative transform and the current active transform and only add the difference? This would provide proper visual feedback and make it much more intuitive. Another added benefit is that I can use auto keying without it messing the other channels up. Thanks.
@tom: I made an addon for creating ADD strips correctly here, which I would consider a quick-fix......I didn't make it for you or with knowledge of your request in mind but that's the essential idea of what it does.
I've no hope for a proper implementation of either this method, nor basic or proper layers.
As for my addon: a bug I'm remembering that I found is if you "duplicate/move" keyframes (via dope/graph) to the current frame while the parser is running, it will incorrectly alter the keyframes. This is because the method required to get the "offset" value basically compares the current visual value and the previous value, and basically ignores the keyframes/active_window type.
I've no intention of fixing this, so it's just something to be aware of.
I agree this would be very useful. I sent an email about this to the mailing list, and it's something Aligorith has on his " roadmap for the next two years ". I'd hope to see this implemented as well, and it's promising to see they're acknowledging the problems, but it seems like it's not a priority...