A Consolidated Timeline Channel for EVERYTHING...

[JoelMayer]

... and fiddling as little with layers as possible.

I know, i kinda already entered this request but i wanted to give it its own topic since i think this is really much more important than people may think.

I think with all the options we have now of deforming and animating a rig (bones, meshes, curvers, switches, etc.) it's really really almost crucial to have a consolidated timeline channel that includes every last little channel that has animation on it in a rig for easy re-timing. When wanting to adjust a specific layer or animation we obviously can still go down on specific channels as usual but i think just having ONE keyframe showing for any keys that include just EVERYTHING that's being animated (also color changes, curvature, opacity, etc. etc. etc.) would speed things up dramatically instead of always moving parts around and then realizing everything is messed up because there's some keys on a vector level that haven't been moved yet etc.

I'm used to breaking a rig like crazy to get the poses i want and to then adjust parts of the drawing by deformers or, in Moho's case, shoving vectors around. I much prefer doing this at the animation stage instead with smart actions because those can never really accustom every given situation. Hence why i think it would be really good if there was just the one channel.

I know there's the AE KeyTool and while great, i'd love to be able to just select ONE key on my timeline and adjust it by dragging without worrying that i might not have caught everything.

Hope this makes sense. Please consider this Moho-Santa, Christmas is not quite over yet

[JoelMayer]

The last little project i did only further confirmed this as my top must-have feature/change of 2024

Here's how i'd structure it more or less:

CONSOLIDATED CHANNEL (GRABS EVERYTHING) >

-Consolidated Bone Channel
--ALL Bone Transform
--- Selected Bone Transform
-- Vitruvian Bone, etc.
---Selected Vitruvian Bone, etc.

-Consolidated Vector Channel (All vector layer animation of a rig in one channel)
--Active Vector Layer Channel (The animation of a selected vector layer (if applicable)
---Active Vector Channel Points
---Active Vector Channel Curvature
---Active Vector Channel Stroke Width
---etc.
--Selected Vector Points Channel ("Red" Channel of selected Vector Points (if applicable)
---Same as with the active layer
Etc. for channels specific for vector layers like Stroke Exposure, Width, Shape color, etc.

-Consolidated Layer Channels
--Layer Transform, Scale, Rot
---Selected Layer Transform, Scale,Rot

-- Switch Layers
---Layer Transform Scale Rot
---Selected Switch Layer

-- Frame by Frame

Etc. (Things like Layer Order and other separate categories.)

In general i was thinking that detailed transformation separations and sub-categories (i.e. bone transform AND scale AND rotation OR vector points and curvatures and width) should perhaps be consolidated by default into one channel whether they're selected or not and then be expanded at will. This would clean up a lot of the timeline a whole bunch and make it much easier to get to the things you really want. Plus it's actually not that often, that we need to adjust these parameters separately in my experience.

Toon Boom has separate transformations and so on in a separate "plus" expansion menu of their layers and otherwise just keeps it to a simple keyframe that represents everything (if that makes sense).



I think getting all these things consolidated and getting a proper consolidated channel in the top is almost crucial for efficient use of Moho's great vector animation tools in the future, especially if you, like me, are after a more frame by frame look that mixes a lot of different channel types.