How about unify the animation editors?
For example, in c4d, the dopesheet, the graph and NLA editors, they all live in the same window, with a quick and easy toggle to switch between them. Imo, that's better and fast to work, than have all of them on different separate editors only. I think it would be nice for Blender. Less clutter of unnecessary editors, unless it's really needed. ;)
Example:
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This is done in Bforartists Blender UI fork. You only need one animation view, and you have them all.
@ondraise15: I have to say, with these toggles.. I personally cannot live without them now. I switch these so often. I hate having all 3 open at the same time sometimes - and having a quick switch to the graph editor then back to dopesheet is super handy. Mouse over, click. No more mouse over, click, mouse over, click to change.
One important thing is that NLA editor currently is not supported for FBX export. You have to bake the entire thing to a new action. While Maya, and other softwares, work with proper animation layers, which mean that I can create an action and another action that works on top of the previous one, without the need to bake anything, and the whole group of interconnected layers exports perfectly to fbx as a new action (to then import on Unity/Unreal)... which doesn't happen with NLA (too clumsy, only considers the NLA own workflow, not the dopesheet workflow) and makes you lose flexibility when it forces you to bake the whole thing. To add two action layers you have to be shuffling between NLA and dopesheet for fine tuning and moving keyframes around. One should be working only on NLA, or only on the dopesheet.
So I propose that the merge should also consider the idea of NLA working as Animation Layers, not as something that requires you work on a different window and baking everything to a new action (which is kinda destructive behavior).
@evandroewd: I also have had this issue - but this should be another suggestion in another thread with a clear proposal. There have been a number looking for NLA improvements - but I haven't managed to see the right vote count. Worth trying again.
Yes, please! Though I always imagined Blender could take it a step further and allow them all to be seen at the same time. When taking into account the redundancies these windows have I don't think its far-fetched for the timeline, keyframes, NLA strips and even video/music clips to all work in harmony. Just look how well the 3D window blended mesh, bones, curves/grease pencil, and everything else. What if there was a window simply called the 4D viewer?
yeah i was hoping this would happen, and also that you could see the greasepencil keytfames with the rest of the stuff at the same time..
This is a must.... it's impossible to argue against it lol...
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this should have happened during the 2.8 developement otherwise we won't see it until the next big UI changes, now everything is it's own Editor including Drivers...my biggest take is the modes in the dope sheet those should be toggable options instead of a drop down menu.
yes !
also voted here :
blender.community/c/rightclickselect/fBbbbc/animation-workflow-view-toggle-iconology-to-save-c
I agree, I made a more general proposal for adding a header with user-defined buttons to easily switch between editors. You can choose to display the buttons as icons, text or both. Take a look if you want blender.community/c/rightclickselect/0Bbbbc/
A first workaround that you can use is this addon: blerifa.com/en/tools/SwitchAnimView/ that lets you switch between dopesheet and grapheditor using Z
@Julien Duroure: I like that one, also Blender Sensei combined the dopesheet and the time line which is extremely helpful.