Separate axis keying

Discuss ideas for new features with other users. To submit feature requests to Smith Micro, please visit support.smithmicro.com

Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger

Post Reply
User avatar
synthsin75
Posts: 9968
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:20 pm
Location: Oklahoma
Contact:

Separate axis keying

Post by synthsin75 »

Okay, this may be hard to explain, but here goes. Basically what I'd like to be able to do is keyframe my point motion in only one axis. This way the other axis would be able to tween freely between other keyframes. This would really help out the workflow of what I'm doing.
File here
In this example, I start with a profile and 'flip' it by scaling (-1). Then in the middle of the tween I extrude the sides for the front view. This works well, and I can quickly produce a full 360 degree turn. In this file, I did the up and down angles by rotating my two profiles and then manually adjusting the front view. I have also done it by redoing the extrusion.
I do my extrusion by constraint to one axis, so the other axis is irrelevant at this frame. If I didn't have to key the coordinates of the unused axis, then the tween from one profile to the other would handle the rest.

I assume none of this is available to the scripting interface, so hopefully Mike will have some input on the likelihood of AS being able to handle this. I imagine it could be implemented several ways in the UI. A menu option to 'free x-axis'/'free y-axis', that would do this for selected points at the current frame. A couple of tool buttons to do this. Or just separate x and y channels for the selected point motion of the timeline.
User avatar
heyvern
Posts: 7035
Joined: Fri Sep 02, 2005 4:49 am

Post by heyvern »

Yes, we need this feature. Can't be scripted. This would need an application change to place and edit separate keys. Some kind of "expanded" translation triangle in the channel markers or something in the graph editor.

In scripting I can do this but that is a different thing altogether since there are no "keys" when using scripted motion.

-vern
User avatar
rylleman
Posts: 750
Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2005 5:22 pm
Location: sweden
Contact:

Post by rylleman »

Yes please, very much. I've wished for this many times when animating.
User avatar
synthsin75
Posts: 9968
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:20 pm
Location: Oklahoma
Contact:

Post by synthsin75 »

Or...is there any fairly simple way to modify the project text file to achieve this? Maybe manually dropping the coordinates of one axis, or would ASP just read this as a corrupted file?


Edit: I just looked into this. I think I understand what I'm looking at. Manually modifying the file isn't practical. The values I'd need to find and replace are not consistent. It would be far too tedious since each point is key separately. I can delete the value from one axis just find, so they are independant values.

So this feature should be fairly easy to impliment, from what I can tell.
Mike? Maybe just have each key be able to copy the previous key's data for a selected axis?
In scripting I can do this but that is a different thing altogether since there are no "keys" when using scripted motion.
Vern, what kind of script solution do you have for this?
chucky
Posts: 4650
Joined: Sun Jan 28, 2007 4:24 am

Post by chucky »

My vote for axis keying too.
Would be especially useful in the graph mode.
Post Reply