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Slot Image Keying UI

Xelnath

Hey guys,

I just wanted to let you know that in order to make his life easier, my animator has taken to doing this with his Spine keys:

(In a nutshell, he's created separate slots for each frame of animation )

Could this be supported as a native feature? (Expand slot keys again to show which texture is keyed on) This would dramatically reduce the number of polygons created for the character in spine, right?

It might also help animators keep track of which texture they've keyed.

Pharan

As long as you only need one frame to be visible at a time, you should keep the frames in one slot or you end up with this mess.

Also as long as you only key one frame to be visible at a time, the number of polygons/triangles wouldn't be the problem.
It's the number of keys the runtime has to crunch through for every timeline and every frame.

I think showing an attachment name (and image) on hovering over the attachment key is planned to come with the upcoming Slot Image Chooser UI.

The way Unity's Animation UI solves this is by putting thumbnails on the dopesheet. It's helpful for drastically different-looking frames but not for relatively high-framerate animations, or gradual animations where the previous and next frames look practically similar in thumbnails.

Xelnath

This visual presentation shown above of on/off for particular items in slots feels appropriate for this context.
I agree what you said about "all in one slot":
That's the "right" way to do it for the technology.

The need here is for visual feedback to match the use-case and to encourage the best result from the tech side - in this case, he just wants to be sure which slot is active and that its not the same as the previous. The grey on/off UI is visually pleasing and gives the feedback he needs.

I think a "mouseover" preview of the attachment key might actually not solve the issue being pointed out here.

Pharan

That's good input for when the UI gets implemented though. Thanks for sharing. I'll save a link to this topic for reference.

I wonder how you would indicate that the previous key is different from the next key.
A line vs no line between keys comes to mind but it would mean something different vs how the other dopesheet items behave.

Xelnath

I think slots fundamentally require a different way of thinking:

Imagine an extra expander that shows all of the textures which can go in that slot. That's a bit heavy if you're using 40 different images, but you'll never mistake which one you're on!

Nate

I don't suggest using a slot per image and having a timeline per slot. While it may make a pretty pattern in the dopesheet, you have way more keys and timelines than are required, which adds to the size of the data (which may not be important) and the amount of processing that needs to be done to apply the animation (which is likely still very little compared to the rest of a typical application's work).

For what you are doing, you could set the keys for a single slot, then copy and paste to repeat it for the rest of the animation.

We plan to have a UI for choosing which attachment is visible which would show all possible images for the slot. We also plan tooltips on key hover to show which image is shown for the key. We also plan a region sequence attachment which would show a number of images at a specified frame rate, eliminating the need for keying attachment changes for frame-by-frame animation.

Xelnath

I agree the slot per image is bad. In this case, the cycling images and frame rate would be the proper solution.