1) Stride Bone
For walkcycles, you could already set an NLA strip to cycle over a path
based on a preset distance value. This cycling happens based on a linear
interpolation, with constant speed.
Not all cycles have a constant speed however, like hopping or jumping.
To ensure a perfect slipping-less foot contact, you now can set a Bone
in an Armature to define the stride. This "Stride Bone" then becomes a
sort-of ruler, a conveyor belt, on which the character walks. When using
the NLA "Use Path" option, it then tries to keep the Stride Bone entirely
motionless on the path, by cancelling out its motion (for the entire
Armature). This means that the animation keys for a Stride Bone have to be
exactly negative of the desired path. Only, at choice, the X,Y or Z Ipo
curve is used for this stride.
Examples:
http://www.blender.org/bf/0001_0040.avi
The top armature shows the actual Action, the bottom armature has been
parented to a Path, using the Stride Bone feature.
http://www.blender.org/bf/0001_0080.avi
Here the Stride Bone has a number of children, creating a ruler to be
used as reference while animating.
Test .blend:
http://www.blender.org/bf/motionblender1.blend
Notes:
- Note that action keys for Bones work local, based on the Bone's
orientation as set in EditMode. Therefore, an Y translation always
goes in the Bone's direction.
- To be able to get a "solvable" stride, the animation curve has
to be inverse evaluated, using a Newton Raphson root solver. That
means you can only create stride curves that keep moving forward, and
cannot return halfway.
- Set the Stride Bone in the Editing Buttons, Bone Panel. You can set
change the name or set the axis in the NLA Window, Strip Properties Panel.
- Files in this commit will move to the blender.org release section.
2) Armature Ghosting
In EditButtons, Armature Panel, you can set an armature to draw ghosts.
The number value denotes the amount of frames that have to be drawn extra
(for the active action!) around the current frame.
Ghosts only evaluate its own Pose, executing it's Actions, Constraints and
IK. No external dependencies are re-evaluated for it.
3) NLA/Action time control
If you click in the NLA window on the action (linked to Object), it makes
sure the Timing as drawn in the Action editor is not corrected for NLA.
If you also set the Object to "Action", this timing will be executed on the
Object as well (not NLA time).
(It's a bit confusing... will make a good doc & maybe review UI!)
its adrcode in addition to its string name (shape keys don't have fixed
or unique string names, and they are stored in the key, not the Ipo).
This will make it easier to later use constants from dictionaries to
access a curve.
Usage: press Tkey, and you can proportionally squeeze or stretch the
selected keys, with current mouse position as reference. Only works with
more than 3 keys selected horizontally.
I've remapped the old Tkey (ipo type) to SHIFT+T... might be temporal, I
have an idea for a cool 2D manipulator system that makes it much friendlier
to grab/scale/slide keys all in once.
Also: fix for HOME key in action editor (didn't do Pin), and removed gcc
warnings from jiri's commit in editmesh_add.c
- Python Drivers
In Ipo Window "transform properties" Panel, added the buttons, and the
initial handling (now only printing text). Willian makes it work!
- Better Matrix to Eul, code submitted by Brecht. No time yet to do it
really nice (like a Mat3ToEulCompat(mat, eul, eulc))
(old code is just "#ifdef"-ed out for now.)
Please give this a try on all platforms and give us feedback on what you
see for your sys.path setting in Blender (run these two lines in text window)
import sys
print sys.path
returning Python exceptions. EXPP_ReturnPyObjError() always returns a
NULL because Python expects error conditions to return a NULL pointer
instead of an object. Since the pointer is cast to a PyObject *, it's
ugly to use for propagating the errors back in this case, so this fix just
uses PyErr_SetString() to set the error and return NULL (see the body
of EXPP_ReturnPyObjError() ).
1) Target-less IK
If you add an IK constraint without a target set (no object or bone target),
it now can be grabbed and moved with IK, using its own Bone tip or root as
target itself. This way you can use IK for posing, without having the IK
executed while it animates or while a Pose is being solved for real IK.
After grabbing "Target-less IK", it applies the resulted motion in the
pose-channels, which then can be used to insert keypositions.
The Target-less IK bone can still be rotated without IK, also its chain
can be edited as usual.
UI: The CTRL+I menu gives this as an option too. In the 3D window it is
drawn with orangish color.
Note that IK is not resistant to non-uniform scaling yet.
2) Auto-IK
When the option "Automatic IK" is set, in Edit Buttons Armature Panel,
it creates automatic temporal Target-less IK for the Bone you grab or
translate.
The rules are:
- it only works when a single Bone is selected
- if the Bone is a root bone (no parent), it adds IK to the end of the
chain(s)
- otherwise it adds the IK to the active Bone
- the temporal IK chain only consists of connected Bones.
This method is still a bit experimental. Maybe it should become a special
grabbing option (like SHIFT+G in Pose Mode). It also only works OK for rigs
that fit for it well... when a rig already is fully setup with IK it can't
do much good. :)
You now can set, in NKEY Transform Properties Panel, per XYZ rot/loc/size,
a protection for Transform tools to not change these values anymore.
This now works for Objects or for Bones in PoseMode.
Usage is especially for character animation, to give Bones in a Pose
defaults for rotation axes, so you don't have to worry about the correct
limitations (or setup complex IK limits).
Of course, this feature doesn't influence the animation system.
As an extra also the Transform Widgets then draw less handles. Note this
is based on the actual locked value, and depends still on Manipulator
orientation whether it can be used really.
Implementation warning: I had to remove the 'return' in the middle of the
editobject.c compatible_eul() call. It now makes nice compatible eulers
when they're simple (single axis rotations). Unfortunately there was no
note in the code why it was ever removed...
ALso: fix for crash in using Crease Transform and Mirror modifier.
See, in theory, I didn't make typos when coding.
Explanation:
iloc*loc will be negative when the sign changes between them, so we can snap if an element cross the limit.
It was assuming the real half is always on the positive, which is not true all the time (the mirror modifier doesn't make that assumption).
It incorrecly snapped everything to 0 if the half is in the negative quadrant.
Fix was to do "if (td->loc[0] * td->loc[0] < 0" instead, only snapping if the sign changed.
NOTE: this is all "in theory", as scons is broken, but I'm pretty sure the bug was real and the fix is.
- Action Editor: hotkeys V and H for handles were invisible, added menus
- NLA strips: when current frame is exactly on the strip end, it didn't
include that action... needs a rounding correction for it.
- Action/NLA: deleting keys in Action, which results in only 1 key left,
resulted in zero sized strip length. Now the strips are defaulted to be
1 frame in size minimal.
- NLA editor: ALT+C "Convert to strip" didn't increment Action user count
- 3D Window: CTRL+P make parent to Bone still gave the insane menu with all
bone names. With unified PoseMode select it can just parent to the
active Bone. Note; this now requires the Armature to be in PoseMode to
work.
- Rotation Constraint; the new options to only map to X,Y,Z rotation, did
set the not mapped rotation axes to zero. These should remain unchanged.
- AutoKey optionn for Actions; should not insert action keys on ESC
And added a fix myself:
- When SHIFT+selecting a Bone in PoseMode, and the Armature was not selected
or active yet, it doesn't extend-select/deselect the Bone anymore.
This case is only useful when you try to add IK or Constraint, so the
shift+selection should only activate the clicked Bone.
so there will be more files following.
Anyway: NEW BOOLEANS from Google Summer of Code (Courtesy of Marc Freixas)
Known problems:
- Random freezes while using them as a modifier. This may not be directly
related to modifiers though - it's maybe just the huge number of
operations that leads to a higher probability of triggering a bug
- Static booleans (the first 3 entries in the WKEY menu) are borked
anyway, this is not due to this commit.
- Errors when exiting Blender (dupli_alloc stuff), is not related to this
commit, either.
Please test if everything works, and check the other build systems, I only
know that make works.
Also, compare the results of, say, cube-cylinder, in old and new booleans
:)
We decided that the dashed lines were too much,
making the view very busy with dashed parent lines,
lamps, etc. So now the camera lines are drawn solid,
but the arrow (now triangle by andy's demand!) is drawn
outlined for inactive cameras, filled for the active
camera.
It was calling PyModule_AddObject() with unassigned pointer. Crashed on
exit here (python 2.3.2). Weird thing was that python 2.3.5 didnt complain
CVSr ----------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: I had to fix NMesh.c, Mesh_fromNMesh(), that is a real bad
function... it was returning a Py object as a Mesh (on error).
This is still not really solved (NULL return is not handled).
It works like for moving Object Ipos to the Action, press the Action icon
in the header of the IpoWindow, to the left of the mode selection menu.
It then creates an Action (if not existed) and moves the Shape Ipo to the
Action, using custom channel "Shape".
Main code change was that evaluating Ipo Curves for Relative Shapes had to
be recoded, but that's pretty minor and even much cleaner. (added "curval"
in the KeyBlock struct).
That this feature can work is thanks to the full modifier/derivedmesh
recode Daniel did, can't give him enough credits! :)
Also; small fixes in Outliner, for clicking on the Ipo icon (sets the Ipo
window to show that Ipo).
