Improve Shape Keys for Curves
1) Let all of the attributes of control points of a curve be stored (and animated) with shape keys*.
Like these attributes here:
Goal Weight, Radius and Tilt
2) Allow the preview of curve shape keys while in edit mode.
Which can't be done right now.
Note the "for meshes only". That button doesn't do anything when clicked. It's only there because this shape key UI panel was made for meshes and is being reused for curves...
Seeing and changing the blending of shape keys while editing them is very useful. Let artists preview shapekeys for curves while in edit mode.
*Right now, if you take a curve that has a bevel, you can control the thickness of the bevel at each control point of the curve by changing their radii . However, this is not stored in shape keys: while the curve points are animating in position and rotation, they don't change radius, tilt or goal weight, even if you change them while editing the shape keys. And these things (especially radius) directly affect the shape of the object, so it would be very useful to animate them with shape keys.
3 Comments
Why not use drivers to control those values as well as shape keys? I understand that there's a possibility that things could get really complex if you end up with more than a handful of shapes... but at least there's a starting point here.
From a development standpoint, I think this would require re-arranging the structure of curve objects a bit. As far as I know, shape keys act at the control point level whereas attributes like offset and bevel act on the whole curve object. Not an insurmountable task, I don't think... but not quite as trivial as simply adding those attributes as references for shape keys.
@Jason van Gumster: Hi. I think you misunderstood the proposal... it's talking about control point radius , which is a per-point attribute, not offset (which is a curve property and affects it as a whole, like you said). These per-point attributes can be seen in the (N) properties panel, and they change as you select different points:
A shape key (aka blend shape, morph target) is supposed to store the "look" of the object. These attributes affect the look of the object but are not being stored in shape keys. I believe the implementation is straightforward: the same way you store and blend the local XYZ coordinates for each control point (and their handles) in all shape keys, do the same for the goal weight float, the radius float and the tilt float.
@R. Navega: Ah, you're right. My mistake. Must've been reading too quickly.