idea: driven keys

[birras]

The more I learn maya, the better I get with blender, as I instinctivly think: "ohh, this could be achieved with this or that workaround".

I only started to learn it because, blender does not give much, when it comes to fine-tuning animation. lets face it. its where it lacks most.

now...one thing I really like, is the idea of set driven keys in maya
(short intro of what it is all about: http://www.3dny.org/news.phtml?view=13 )

works out that you have one driver and driven objects.
whenever the driver does somthing the driven will do another keyed action
I rotate one bone (driver), and the hand will make a fist (driven)
One sets driven keys to a sliding door (driven) and it will open/close automaticly everytime the actor (driver) passes it. only the actor has to be animated further....a real time and headache saver

As my python skills dont go much further than cooking a spam salad, I was wondering if it would be realy "that" difficult.
in my naive python noobishness, I think that this can actually be done, with a quite simple script and a simple gui, where one can set the keys for the diver and driven.

driver
enter name object.
enter action key.. exapmle: rot y..

driven
enter name object
enter action key(s) ......

the input is then used with the script:

if driver does this
then driven does that......easy eyhh
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anyway...just a thought

[joeri]

something like this:

[harkyman]

With the renderer having been kicked up several notches, the new selection tools, uv tools, and mesh and transform module restructuring, maybe the next release of Blender (after 2.35) could look at the animation tools. Somthing like this would be incredibly useful. Right now, it seems like animation (especially character anim), is Blender's weakest link.

Short list of animation concepts lagging/lacking:
1. No driven keys - just like you see in this thread
2. Really obtuse interface and limitations for RVKs (morph targets)
3. Weak NLA (I've been working at this, but I'm just not that good of a programmer.)
4. Key type for freezing/freeing objects and bones in worldspace
5. Ability to include object-level keys and constraint keys within an Action

[TheFallenWeeble]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't we do this sort of thing already with action constraints?

[theeth]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't we do this sort of thing already with action constraints?

Sort of. Action constraints are only triggered by rotations so this is kinda limiting.

Martin

[joeri]

action contraints map 1:1
driven keys map via a curve. Big difference.
And they should map anything to anything.
RotZ to LocX (wheel makes bar move)
RotX to (relative)VertexKey (muscle bulge on armature arm)
LocZ to ColR

[TheFallenWeeble]

Very well.. I am wrong.

Thanks for clearing that up for me.