Here's the (almost) completed addon, and here's a demo video showing a real test case. Note how I'm working in the 3D view the whole time and in the background the script is adjusting all the F-curves while I work. Obviously you don't need to have the graph editor open, but its nice to remember what animating used to be like!
Showing posts with label 3d fcurves. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 3d fcurves. Show all posts
Thursday, 10 March 2011
Wednesday, 9 March 2011
Quaternion Beziers in the 3D View
Quaternions might have great benefits for key-framing rotation (no gimbal lock and so on) , but I have to admit that when it comes to the 2D graph editor I don't stand a change of working out what effect of grabbing the handle of a key on a Quat's W channel will have on my animation. Generally I'll adjust the key in the 3D view and leave the bezier handles well alone set to auto (or vector if I want a snap) because independently changing any of the W, X, Y, or Z channels is unlikely to yield any great improvements for my animation!
Today I expanded my add-on to draw the handles for Quaternion and Euler rotations, and to show the path of the tail of the bone (which is probably what we want to track when we're adjusting rotations). The timeslide tool still works but I need to do a little more coding (and get my head around what a normalized quat is) before grabbing the bezier handles in the 3D view is possible.
EDIT: http://www.pasteall.org/19807/python - now with quaternion and euler editing! Editing preview shown below. At 1500 lines it outweighs the mushroomer, the crowd sim and the autowalker as my new biggest project... not bad for 3 days coding!
Tuesday, 8 March 2011
F-curves in the 3D View continued...
Today's progress... 3D Bezier F-curves are now editable in the viewport for unconstrained child bones with inherited rotation and asynchronous/independent curves! I learnt a lot from studying Crouch's script which has a larger but different feature set and currently works with objects not bones (mine currently works with bones and not objects). Hopefully my script shown below, will help push the discussion along and go some way towards bringing this feature to blender in a finished state before it hits maya!
The script is available here but be warned its in heavy beta, so back up your animation first! Feel free to bug report in the comments below. I've coded an on screen help (which will start when you enter the 3D f-curve edit mode) as the shortcuts had to be unusual to save messing with the keymaps.
UPDATED: http://www.pasteall.org/19807/python
There's extensive discussion of the autodesk technology preview which sparked all of this here (though its not really a new technology at all as apparently DigitalFish Reflex had it a few years back).
In other news an animator whose work I've been following recently is Dustin Grella. If your mind is buzzing as much as mine with all that discussion on 3D fcurves you'll probably find it refreshingly low tech... here's Bag for a Banana Peel.
The script is available here but be warned its in heavy beta, so back up your animation first! Feel free to bug report in the comments below. I've coded an on screen help (which will start when you enter the 3D f-curve edit mode) as the shortcuts had to be unusual to save messing with the keymaps.
UPDATED: http://www.pasteall.org/19807/python
There's extensive discussion of the autodesk technology preview which sparked all of this here (though its not really a new technology at all as apparently DigitalFish Reflex had it a few years back).
In other news an animator whose work I've been following recently is Dustin Grella. If your mind is buzzing as much as mine with all that discussion on 3D fcurves you'll probably find it refreshingly low tech... here's Bag for a Banana Peel.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)