Improved Video panel controls
I'd like to see the speed icon, camera, control points to be only selectable if the icon is activated.
It's challenging to select the different elements on the timeline, particularly at the start of the path where they are all active and in the same place. This should limit issues with having a perfect line worked out and it getting bumped, dragged, or having to delete elements so you can access them. Additionally (advanced controls) I'd like a button that snapped the first speed point and the first camera direction to the front of the path (ideally while maintaining orientation) If there's a gap, the camera will jump Would also be helpful to have a "delay" tool, which forced the camera to stop based on the extension (similar to the speed control that we have now) More complicated but also interesting would be a way to link a "hide" button to an object, which worked similar to the delay function. This would likely be easier to manage than a very long control line, but could be imported into that tool.
It's challenging to select the different elements on the timeline, particularly at the start of the path where they are all active and in the same place. This should limit issues with having a perfect line worked out and it getting bumped, dragged, or having to delete elements so you can access them. Additionally (advanced controls) I'd like a button that snapped the first speed point and the first camera direction to the front of the path (ideally while maintaining orientation) If there's a gap, the camera will jump Would also be helpful to have a "delay" tool, which forced the camera to stop based on the extension (similar to the speed control that we have now) More complicated but also interesting would be a way to link a "hide" button to an object, which worked similar to the delay function. This would likely be easier to manage than a very long control line, but could be imported into that tool.
4 Replies
I like this idea. Trying to edit the speed, direction, or zoom points, when in the same or close location to others is often a challenge. The ability to snap to the nearest anchor point for these tools would be great as well. I know this may be extra, but if there were a button that limited/allowed your ability to manipulate a type of tool, it would be real useful if activating that tool to allow editing would somehow highlight the tools you were trying to manipulate. So for example, if turning on the "edit speed point" button highlighted all the speed points. Because of the way these interact, sometimes it is good to know the location of the previous speed point that was affecting the camera path at the current location.
On the delay tool, that would be awesome. With the current setup, the camera must be moving at all times. I get it, it is a timeline. But, the ability to add a 3 or 5 or 12 second pause would allow for true pans and tilts (from a fixed location). I'm not a programmer, but I imagine this could probably get real complicated, especially if you want the other transitions (direction, zoom) to continue through the pause in the speed point.
I think pauses would be manageable. You could always have it move extremely slowly, such as .01 speed or similar if it can't actually stay in place, effectively creating the same effect. I'm thinking this works similarly to the speed point tools, with the metric being a delay before it advances frames. Presumably that's something which can be calculated, or at least calculated relative to the rest of the path.
Couple of other things I'd like to see:
1. Have the default panel button not be "place point", this seems to inadvertently create new timelines fairly frequently. Having it default to a button that didn't actually cause scene changes would be better. I suspect the current feature may be interfering with some filming attempts, especially if you put your controllers down so you don't have to stare at a long path being run.
2. Higher upper ranges on the speed control button (unless it's a percent thing or tied to absolute framerate handling). On very large sketches, I'd often like to zoom through some areas on a timeline at significantly faster speeds so I'm not having to spend ten minutes of camera time on a relatively uninteresting area of the sketch or trying to climb a steep slope. 3. I've seen warnings regarding the layer, which may indicate that the camera needs to have the main layer selected in order to function properly (unconfirmed). If this is the case, I'd like the recording action to automatically set the active layer as the top layer.
2. Higher upper ranges on the speed control button (unless it's a percent thing or tied to absolute framerate handling). On very large sketches, I'd often like to zoom through some areas on a timeline at significantly faster speeds so I'm not having to spend ten minutes of camera time on a relatively uninteresting area of the sketch or trying to climb a steep slope. 3. I've seen warnings regarding the layer, which may indicate that the camera needs to have the main layer selected in order to function properly (unconfirmed). If this is the case, I'd like the recording action to automatically set the active layer as the top layer.
Can we split this up into separate feature requests? There's some things here that are simple, some that are complex, some are easy to agree with and some need more thought/discussion.
I'll start by taking the first point off into it's own post: https://discord.com/channels/783806589991780412/1215343128148443227
I'm not sure how you'd like to sort them or how they may or may not interact with each other in a programming sense.
Might be easier for you to split them off as you want to address each part?
Might be easier for you to split them off as you want to address each part?