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dweomer · Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2005 4:20 am Post subject: Animation tools

I know you are already working on a new timeline tool. Will it have scaleable interpolation modes? Will it allow spline based animations?
Animated textures? Any physics simulation planned?
Are there any plans to front end Megapov 1.2 cloth simulation.

That's alot to ask for, I know. This is a great modeler as it stands.

craouette · Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2005 8:51 am Post subject: Re: Animation tools

dweomer · Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2005 11:05 pm Post subject:

dweomer wrote:
I know you are already working on a new timeline tool. Will it have scaleable interpolation modes?

craouette wrote:
what do you mean ?

As in Poser or truSpace, where temporal difference between numerically equidistant keyframes can be munged (by curve interpolation) independent to total frame count to add motion jitter, velocity, or motion smoothing effects. Simple (for the user) graph based manipulation of how closely objects in a scene match motion curves between keyframes.

EX: An object is set to follow an ovoid spline( as an auto around a race track, for instance) over a range of frames 1-60, with keyframes every 5 frames. One would desire some velocity drift around the entry curve on each leg( where the object leans out, deviating from the spline), some conformance to the path within the peak of the curve( where slowing has occurred, to avoid the track wall, for instance) ,and a little less, but still some, velocity drift around the exit curve going into the next leg.
It would be a nice to have a manipulable graph in the timeline editor, where the animator could select curve types to control how much variance from the path is allowed, and nodes on those curves to adjust the relative speed across frames between keys( weighting the keyframes using curve interpolation). One could then add or subtract frames within the timeline editor as needed by the scene, to avoid the time consuming task of translating objects within the scene , and resetting ranges of keyframes to accomodate the new translations.
This would apply to Morphing animations too, so the animator could "scrub" through the morph sequence before rendering, and tweak it within the timeline editor. Which reminds me, will a Scrub option be possible?