TIMELINE

Notable features include: (excerpt from the CVS commit logs)

• Useful controls for start/end/current frame, and
  buttons to rewind, play and fast forward in the active time area.
  The area before the start frame and after the end is now tinted
  out slightly.
• The auto key recording is now actually useful ;)
  Rather than being a user preference, it’s now a toggle in the
  timeline (red record symbol) which can be flicked on and off
  quickly, which is really how this is meant to be used. The button
  currently works for both object and action keyframes, hopefully it can be extended to other Ipos such as materials in the future.
• Keyframes of the active object are shown as little lines in the
  timeline. Yellow lines represent object keys, blue lines represent
  action keys
• Markers! Markers are the little triangles you can see in the
  screenshot above. Video editors should be very familar with this,
  they’re used very often in editing to help time cuts etc, but I don’t
  know of any other 3D apps that have this, which is a little
  surprising.

  Basically, markers are used to mark spots on the timeline, that may
  mean something to you, so you can easily find that point later.
  They’re useful for timing animation, syncing animation to audio,
  and plenty of other things, I’m sure. You can drop a marker on the
  current frame by pressing M while the mouse is over the timeline,
  or also by pressing M during animation playback (Alt A, play
  button, whatever). You can remove a marker from the current frame
  with Alt M. There is currently a limit of 99 markers

• Support for naming markers. Ctrl M or Frame->Name Marker opens
  a text field where you can give a marker on the current frame a
  name, which displays next to the triangle icon.
• Previous / Next Keyframe buttons. These should be pretty self
  explanatory - clicking them brings the current frame to the previous
  or next keyframe visible on the timeline.
• Hotkeys (S and E) for setting the current frame as the start or
  end frame of the animation.
• Right mouse button now cancels animation playback, just like most
  other ‘temporary modes’ (same functionality as Esc).
• Timeline now initialises showing frame numbers by default

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 2nd, 2005 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Code, Blender User Interface. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

1. Mal / 2005.03.04 @ 05:57
   
   

   Nice work Matt,

   I can’t believe that you are getting all this work done, and you’re only really starting out as a coder!!! Although I’ve heard that many creatives have approached the logic ( and art ) of coding from a certain angle, and have implemented many excellent software solutions

   I can’t wait to see how you get on, when you get up to speed!

   Many thanks for your continued excellent work on Blender…
   Mal

2. Jiri / 2005.03.04 @ 07:40
   
   

   It would be nice to ha possibility to move markers. RMB … select marker “G” … move marker. Duplication with “Shift-D” would be nice too. RMB popups some window no … it is confusing for me, because RMB is used for selecting in other windows. We want consistent behavior in Blender, right?

   Jiri

3. Matt / 2005.03.06 @ 17:59
   
   

   Mal: Aw shucks, thanks! I’m really just going by trial and error, learning what I need to learn in order to get the job done. I think it may also help that Ton was an ‘artist coder’, without really any formal programming education - I suspect it’s influenced the blender source in a way that it’s easier for people like me to understand.

   Jiri: I replied to you on the tuhopuu-devel mailing list :) Thanks for your help with this further work, it’s much appreciated!