Finally, here is the basic (functional) prototype of the new animation system which will allow for the infamous "everything is animatable", and which also addresses several of the more serious shortcomings of the old system. Unfortunately, this will break old animation files (especially right now, as I haven't written the version patching code yet), however, this is for the future.
Highlights of the new system:
* Scrapped IPO-Curves/IPO/(Action+Constraint-Channels)/Action system, and replaced it with F-Curve/Action.
- F-Curves (animators from other packages will feel at home with this name) replace IPO-Curves.
- The 'new' Actions, act as the containers for F-Curves, so that they can be reused. They are therefore more akin to the old 'IPO' blocks, except they do not have the blocktype restriction, so you can store materials/texture/geometry F-Curves in the same Action as Object transforms, etc.
* F-Curves use RNA-paths for Data Access, hence allowing "every" (where sensible/editable that is) user-accessible setting from RNA to be animated.
* Drivers are no longer mixed with Animation Data, so rigs will not be that easily broken and several dependency problems can be eliminated. (NOTE: drivers haven't been hooked up yet, but the code is in place)
* F-Curve modifier system allows useful 'large-scale' manipulation of F-Curve values, including (I've only included implemented ones here): envelope deform (similar to lattices to allow broad-scale reshaping of curves), curve generator (polynomial or py-expression), cycles (replacing the old cyclic extrapolation modes, giving more control over this). (NOTE: currently this cannot be tested, as there's not access to them, but the code is all in place)
* NLA system with 'tracks' (i.e. layers), and multiple strips per track. (NOTE: NLA system is not yet functional, as it's only partially coded still)
There are more nice things that I will be preparing some nice docs for soon, but for now, check for more details:
http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-taskforce25/2009-January/000260.html
So, what currently works:
* I've implemented two basic operators for the 3D-view only to Insert and Delete Keyframes. These are tempolary ones only that will be replaced in due course with 'proper' code.
* Object Loc/Rot/Scale can be keyframed. Also, the colour of the 'active' material (Note: this should really be for nth material instead, but that doesn't work yet in RNA) can also be keyframed into the same datablock.
* Standard animation refresh (i.e. animation resulting from NLA and Action evaluation) is now done completely separate from drivers before anything else is done after a frame change. Drivers are handled after this in a separate pass, as dictated by depsgraph flags, etc.
Notes:
* Drivers haven't been hooked up yet
* Only objects and data directly linked to objects can be animated.
* Depsgraph will need further tweaks. Currently, I've only made sure that it will update some things in the most basic cases (i.e. frame change).
* Animation Editors are currently broken (in terms of editing stuff). This will be my next target (priority to get Dopesheet working first, then F-Curve editor - i.e. old IPO Editor)
* I've had to put in large chunks of XXX sandboxing for old animation system code all around the place. This will be cleaned up in due course, as some places need special review.
In particular, the particles and sequencer code have far too many manual calls to calculate + flush animation info, which is really bad (this is a 'please explain yourselves' call to Physics coders!).
* Added crash fixes for loading old files with Actions/Armatures in them. Was caused by usage of some old globals still and the functions in question not performing NULL checks on the validity of the data they're given.
* Added back reorganise action channels tools (shift/ctrl-shif pageup/down) for Action Editor. These are only available in 'Action Mode' only.
* Tidied up Action Editor/Dopesheet tools code - removed various unused things, and also, added an API call in anim_deps.c to send the correct notifiers, since I anticipate that they're likely to require a few context checks which would be better to centralise than copy+paste everywhere.
Note to Ton: could you have a look at this notifier stuff here? I'm not sure which ones I should be sending...
* Also added a few assorted comments in various places
Think global, act local!
The old favorite G.scene gone! Man... that took almost 2 days.
Also removed G.curscreen and G.edbo.
Not everything could get solved; here's some notes.
- modifiers now store current scene in ModifierData. This is not
meant for permanent, but it can probably stick there until we
cleaned the anim system and depsgraph to cope better with
timing issues.
- Game engine G.scene should become an argument for staring it.
Didn't solve this yet.
- Texture nodes should get scene cfra, but the current implementation
is too tightly wrapped to do it easily.
* Brought back clean (OKEY), sample (Shift-OKEY), and delete (XKEY/DELKEY) tools for the Action Editor.
Currently clean uses a predefined threshold (as a rna-prop, though it's still lacking the popup to set this when it is called)
* Added new file for 'destructive' keyframe operations/tools.
* Got keyframing.c compiling. Now, some of these tools need to be operatorised. Also, the API there might change when enough of the system is stable for RNA-IPO work to take place (so that it can be tested).
* Brought back backend for editing keyframes IPO/IPO-Curves. Did some refactoring work here that will still have to be verified when operators using them are added.
* Animation channel filtering code now returns the number of channels filtered (for Action Editor to set totrect of channels - TODO still!)
* View2D - made function to check if mouse is in View2D scrollers an API function
* Renamed keyframe related files. The old names were too clumsy.
* Started porting click-select operators for Action Editor. These don't work currently, as the events are being stolen by the markers. This needs to be fixed ASAP.
