I’ve posted this to the animsys mailing list
http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-animsys/2009-October/000072.html
and I also would like to hear from you guys, the users like me what do you think of this animation proposal:
http://www.liquidnet.it/AnimationProposal.pdf
Thanks.
Gian
being still in my infancy when it comes to animating, i find your proposal really interesting, and i would like to see them implimented in a future version,
good luck with it mate i hope it comes off and makes blender the best in the business
I love reading well thought-out proposals from people who know what they’re doing. 
Here’s some feedback:
Timeline view: You mentioned that most of this stuff can be accomplished from the dope sheet. You’re right. If you’re just generating your initial poses for timing and to establish the drawings, you can in fact collapse the Dope Sheet view to only display a single line of keys. Add to that the fact that it can be set to display only the keys for the selected object, and it can do what you mentioned. If configured that way (which takes ten seconds, once), you get a timeline that shows a single key marker for a frame, regardless of how many components or bones it is made of. You can select it, move it, etc., and use all of the regular dope sheet (Action Editor) tools for selection and movement that we already have. Seems like a win-win to me.
Visualization and Control: I think a system like this would be a great addition to Blender’s animation tools. Knowing how things are structured, I don’t believe that the paint-based highlighting for control bones would be that difficult to implement, and would be extremely useful. Also, I’ve proposed the addition of the floating control panels for animation myself, and I concur with you that it’s a fantastic tool, both in what it can bring to the performance and in how it reduces clutter. I’m a big fan of clutter reduction. In fact, it’s probably why my own rigs end up a little sparser than they ought to be. I’d rather work a little harder, but be less visually assaulted with complex tools. Obviously, it would be better to work more easily with less complex tools… Some built-in widgets for TD’s to use in this manner would be great.
Match Transform: this already exists in 2.49 through the Copy function (select, Shift-select, Ctrl-C, choose attribute to copy – location, rotation, etc.) It could stand some enhancement though for armatures, letting us choose from local, normal or global values.
Spacing Tool: If you’re already using 2.5, load up a bit of character animation. Go midway between two keys. Select some bones and hit Shift-I. This lets you slide the mouse left and right to choose from any breakdown between the keys. There is also a Push tool (not quite working yet, Ctrl-I) for exaggerating a pose, and a Relax tool (Alt-I).
In short, I really like the visualization portion of your proposal. It would be a great addition. Thanks for taking the time to think about all of this and put it together so nicely.
Thanks Harkyman,
being without internet for almost 2 months I really need to catch up now
The timeline idea is something that I was unsure too. Probably, as I already written on the ML, a good solution would be to have the action editor/dope sheet to collapse automatically all the used channel if the window is resized to a certain height.
What do you think ?
Cheers,
Gian
Don’t have much time to think about it in depth, but here are a couple of thoughts about these ideas…
I like very much the “directly-on-skin” selection of bones. Maybe the same way we can use any object as a bone visualization, we could indicate a vertex group.
Also I think would be nice to be able to indicate a “default” manipulator (and its orientation) for any of these parts. So for instance when you select a hand, like the Pixar pic in your proposal, the rotation widget appears (with normal orientation), but we set the move widget (with global orientation) to appear when a knee orientation controler is selected. So there’s no need to do it manually, unless the manipulator is changed by the user after selecting a part, or that part doesn’t have any manipulator assigned as default.
Maybe the idea about hidding parts of the model to focus on just the desired part could be implemented as having the ability to toggle vertex groups visibility on/off in object mode.
And I like the idea of making a difference between normal keys and breakdown keys. Someone also mentioned being able to filter (hide/show) normal or breakdown keys. I would use only IKEY for setting both types of keys and then be able to change a key propety (?) to breakdown-key. After all the breakdown is done first (you’re more exprienced animator than I am, so let me know if that’s not necessarily the case), so, after breakdown stage you can select all those keys in one step and make them “break-down” keys.
somewhere in this forum someone made a script to allow one to select the mesh instead of bones. it’s name escapes me though.
here we go http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=128607&highlight=dreamworks
I’m not sure if you are familiar with 3ds max, but there is very useful “mini dope sheet” like timeline. There you can visualize keyframes with different colors (pos RED, rot GREEN and scl BLUE for example) and you can slide and reposition timings. You can also select multiple keys and scale with range and so.
Most of time I don’t use dope sheet at all because I can do all simple retiming stuffs via timeline. There is also nice filtering function to see only active tool (pos, rot, scl, materials and such) which can also speed up your work.
Many good things there, but not only good. Even there is filtering system, it’s not so fast to use it since you have to right click and select from list. For example if you have pos and rot keys at same frame, there is no way to separate them without opening curve editor/dope sheet or set timeline filter to show only pos or rot.
So maybe one solution for good “timeline dope sheet” is to have low profile keyframe rows with display filters. By default all shows together with single row (you can still see different keys with different colors). If you want to move rot keys separately, just click expand button from timeline label and you will see pos, rot and scl rows separately or depending how your settings are. If there is multiple selections, expand won’t show all object separately, but all position keys are on pos row and rot keys are on rot row and such. So you have option to handle all key frames at once or different properties separately. If those are not enough, then you really should open full dope sheet! 
After good display system, we definitely need some move (slide), delete, scale and copy/paste or slice clone functions to speed up our work! And when you are sliding or scaling, you really want to know from and where and how many frames you are sliding or how many percent you are scaling!!! Small info box when handling key frames would be very useful, don’t you think?
What about play animation range? Usually I want play just part of my animation to check what I have done and not whole scene. Quick animation play range would be nice. might be good idea to have play range and play whole timeline buttons separately?
EDIT: Oh, there is already preview range, but it works only once and it will forget range.
OK, those are my first thoughts for now. It’s very fun to through some thoughts and discuss what might work and not. But hay, now I have to get sleep
Nice work Gianmichelle. Aligorith has already tackled the breakdown/keyframe colouring thing. Maybe not exactly as you outlined, but still, its progressing.
And I’ve always desired a nicer way of selecting a rig - that’s something that needs to change.
What you think about selecting keys on Dope Sheet and Graph Editor? Right now you can select single key by left click and move it by dragging, but have to press B before you can select multiple keys. Why not allow left click rectangular selection by default and also keep left direct click select for selecting single key?
Specially on Dope Sheet, B + G combo is slowing quite much! Why not rectangular select (paint select would be awesome too!) and put cursor above selected key and move without pressing anything else than LMB
On Graph Editor, rectangular selection would be nice to be default. So much faster and easier than hitting B all the time.
There should be fit to selection and fit all buttons/hot key/menu also and most definitely some more informative feedback when moving keys than Dx and Dy. Showing position of frame, value and offsets would be nice. Maybe just under cursor or somewhere it could fit.
OK so there were some thoughts. What you think?
Coming from an AM background too I totally agree with you, as animators workflow is king, you had excellent points in your proposal especially with the timeline as a quick blocking and editing tool, I’d like to request some additional features for the timeline:
1- ability to turn on/off waveform via a shortcut or menu item
2- copy/cut/paste keyframe
3- scale keyframes
4. having a drop down menu to quickly switch between sets
What you think about selecting keys on Dope Sheet and Graph Editor? Right now you can select single key by left click and move it by dragging, but have to press B before you can select multiple keys. Why not allow left click rectangular selection by default and also keep left direct click select for selecting single key?
Specially on Dope Sheet, B + G combo is slowing quite much! Why not rectangular select (paint select would be awesome too!) and put cursor above selected key and move without pressing anything else than LMB
On Graph Editor, rectangular selection would be nice to be default. So much faster and easier than hitting B all the time.
Drag select should be the default behavior for blender, I was rambling about it many times, even dedicated a whole thread for it :
Marquee select on mouse click and drag please …
I totally support the proposal +1000 here
Hi Gian!
I think we were in a few sessions together at AM.
I love your proposal. Amazing job putting together a bunch of ideas that were only vaguely bobbing around in my head. I’d definately use everything you mentioned.
Paul