NLA Additive Animation Layers (legacy 2.7x)
🕑 Added 2018-08-07 00:40:47 +0000 UTCSee thread for questions and info: https://blenderartists.org/t/1100149/32
If you don't understand something: ask and I'll try to explain.
In the User Preferences, you can manually select where to place these buttons, or click the checkbox next to it to disable the item.
Animation Layers:
- This feature by default is always running, as it's intended.
When you insert a keyframe, using any Blend type, it will automatically fix the keyframe, to properly work like an animation layer . When/Where/How you use this is up to you.
A red plus/minus (+/-) button can be found in the header, to enable/disable this autofixer
- Next to this button is a slider used when you Reset Transforms (Alt+G/R/S). Hover over the slider for an explanation
- Tweening:
- Blender's built-in tweens don't work with additive layers, so I had to try to manually recreate it. My system appears to work mostly like it but I can't figure a conversion for an exact match.
- In the process, I also created tweening for Object mode.
- I didn't get around to adding axis locks for tweens like in the default version. If you need them, you can turn turn off the additive layer button to get the default version with axis locks in Pose mode.
Bake Extra:
- This can be found next to the default Bake button and essentially works like the default Animation Baker, with additional features such as Baking to additive layers *(without treating them like they're REPLACE Blend type)*
Bone Cursor:
- This can be found in the header as a 3D cursor icon (when a rig/bone are selected).
When manipulating bones, this will automatically snap the 3D cursor to the active bone. This makes it more convenient to the 3D cursor as the pivot point.
- The slider next to this allows you to reposition where the cursor defaults to on the bone, so for example you can default the pivot to the bone's tail, which would be useful for rotating a foot on it's toes without using a foot-roll rig
- Another button is to the right of the slider. When you click and manually set the 3D cursor's location, it won't snap to the bone anymore. What the button does is allow you to manually offset the cursor but still have it follow the selected bone.
SlowMo:
- This feature's purpose is to allow you to play your animation smoothly in slowmotion. This would help you see problems with the motion more clearly.
There are two modes for this:
- This slider can be found in the header and in the Properties >> Render window.
It uses the Time Remapping values in Blender to automatically adjust playback speed with smooth frames.
The Time Remaping feature is a bit janky, so it's only good for viewing the animation *(preview, never edit)* but it's quick to set and loses no data *(unless you were using time remap for something already)*
- Global SlowMo
- This slider can only be found in the Properties >> Render window
When you change the value then click apply, all animation time range data will be scaled to match your adjusted value.
You can insert keys like normal in the mode, then just reset the time speed and click apply to go back to normal.
- WARNING: Read the hover information to avoid data loss
Hotkeys:
- The additive layers and tweening actions use custom operators intended to run over default Blender operators and run those default operators when the custom version is not needed.
- Clear Transforms:
- Alt + G = Clear Location
- Alt + R = Clear Rotation
- Alt + S = Clear Scale
- Alt + Q = Clear Loc+Rot+Scale
- Tween:
- Shift + E = Breakdowner
- Ctrl + E = Push Pose
- Alt + E = Relax Pose
Info about Blender 2.80 and Animation Layers:
What the from this addon does is attempt to fix a bug that's always been in Blender's NLA system. A developer recently fixed this bug in Blender 2.80, making that part of this addon redundant.
See thread for more details
