Keymesh 2 (Curves! Frame Picker!)

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I did complete rewrite of iconic Keymesh add-on by Pablo Dobarro, that lets you create stop-motion animation inside Blender.

Keymesh makes object data picker animatable, meaning objects can have new data on every frame. That gives you ability to sculpt animations frame-by-frame, or even do something more experimental, like frame-by-frame attribute painting.

Here are some videos that showcase functionality of Keymesh:

  • Frame Picker!

Keymesh Too has a new Frame Picker UI, that registers all versions of object you’ve made with Keymesh, puts them in a compact list, and insert new keyframes easily without having to duplicate keyframes in Dope Sheet. You can organize your frames by naming them and removing what you no longer need.

  • Curves!

Keymesh Too includes support for all types of Curves (Yes, even Hair and Text), Metaballs, Lattices, and e.t.c. Every object type in Blender! (except empties, armatures, and grease pencil for now).

curves

  • Shape Keys to Keymesh

A new operator in the 2.1 update lets you convert animated shape keys into Keymesh animation. Shape keys are removed and instead sculpts are baked into Keymesh frames. That means you can animate frame-by-frame by sculpting on top of shape key animations. Combining traditional 3D animation workflow and Graph Editor with Keymesh might give you amazing results and an easier workflow!

  • Other Features of Keymesh Too:

  1. Shortcuts:
    Page Up and Page Down moves current frame to previous and next Keymesh keyframe.
    Ctrl-Page Up and Ctrl-Page Down insert new Keymesh keyframse forward or backward.

  2. New, simpler UI with more tooltips and Remove Keymesh Block operator

  3. Option in preferences to backup original object data before adding Keymesh data

  4. Option in preferences to allow or disallow creating Keymesh keyframes in Edit Mode (Because of how Blender evaluates Edit Mode, updates are not visible and can cause problems)

  5. Shape Key support (Note: Because Shape Keys are separate data blocks in Blender, copying them can create some issues, for example delays when scrubbing in Timeline, and if you remesh your object, shape keys will be deleted)

  6. Numerous bug fixes for the original Keymesh and code clean-up

Download this add-on from Gumroad or buy from Blender Market. Add-on is and will always be free, but if you can afford consider buying or donating, it helps with the development a lot. Use this thread to report bugs, request features, or simply share what you make with it (please).

I will be maintaining this add-on for the foreseeable future. If you want to support me you can also do so on BuyMeACoffe

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If you would like to help me out developing this thing contact me. There are some things I could use a helping hand on. Tomorrow I will upload this on GitHub too.

I might add support for empties and armatures too, if I find a way around current obstacles. And Grease Pencil too after 3.0 is integrated. It’s not necessary but it is possible, so why not.

Remove operator in Frame Picker is bugged and I’m trying to find a way to resolve it. In some cases it returns error and cancels operation before it’s finished, but works perfectly if current frame is after last keyframe.

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BRILLIANT!
I was so sad that they seemingly abandoned this. (Always wondered why)
Anyway, just bought the support version on Gumroad. It would be so good if you stayed on this :slight_smile:
So far it seems to work just fine in 3.6 and 4.0 alpha except the error you mentioned but I haven’t tested it out thouroghly. But I really like the design.
For anyone wanting to try this: I had to unpack the folder into my addon directory. Choosing zip from the prefs doesn’t seem to work just yet.

Also in the long run I’d like to have the ability to choose in which tab it should appear. My N panel is really starting to get crowded :crazy_face:

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That is very helpful feedback thank you.
Blender does that sometimes when .zip files are copied instead of installed, I haven’t identified the reason yet, but couple of unpack-repack usually works. I’ll fix that.

I actually have a version in which you can choose the tab from preferences but forgot to include it. I’ll have new file with both tomorrow.

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you should wait with grease pencil … native instanced keyframes integrated into gp are soon coming as one of the new main features of gp 3.0 and would make this redundant and just waste your ressources.

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That is not what this add-on does for GP. It doesn’t deal with frames and paintings at all. It is basically a object versioning feature that lets you animate which version of object you’re looking at on which frame.

Keymeshing GP object will basically backup entire object and let you move on to the next frame with new data-block, but everything before that frame is backed up. For GP that is not useful, because it already is basically stop-mo, but it can be useful as object versioning device, and it’s simply writing ‘GPENCIL’ in the allowed objects and it will work on Grease Pencil too.

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exactly that will be integrated into GP , a core feature all other 2D animation softwares have/do

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No. What they’re introducing is frame versioning. Not object versioning. That is completely different. Object can hold much more information than just frames. Strokes, Onion Skinning data, layer data, all of those are saved on data level

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Hi, thanks a ton for making this. Does this work with partcle hair in Blender?

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I haven’t tested with old particle hair. I’m not sure if they’re stored on object or data level. I haven’t changed much about how meshes work, so if it worked with original it should, but I doubt it.

But this one works with new Hair Curves.

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Sorry I meant the new hair curves.
So with this addon, you can pose the hair frame by frame? That’s great. Thanks.

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Excellent news, thank you for this! :smiley:
Does anyone know what happened with original Keymesh development?

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I’m sorry for the delay couldn’t find the time to work on this, but I also added some new features for Keymesh Too.1 :nerd_face:

  • Registration issue fixed. Add-on should be installed regularly
  • Remove block operator now works perfectly without bugs
  • Sidebar category can be changed in preferences
  • UI now shows how many times each block has been used in the animation
  • When “Keyframe on Selection” is disabled, UI will show which object is keyframed and which is selected differently
    image

You can download new file from Gumroad, you might also receive an email about it. If you come across any issues please let me know.

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Awesome work. Thanks :+1:

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Over 100 downloads now. Thank you all for your support. This year I plan to work on some more features and stop-motion add-ons. I will demonstrate some of them at Blender Conference.

Financial support helps me allocate more time on working on these projects so consider donating if you can afford, it will be greatly appreciated

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I don’t know if this is the correct place to report bugs. Currently, inserting a keymesh frame will remove the shape keys of the object.

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I will look into that. Thank you

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I have added initial support for Shape Keys, will polish and upload 2.1.2 either today or tomorrow. But it comes with a warning:

Since Shape Keys are separata data-blocks in Blender and not part of the Mesh, they need to be duplicated too. And Shape Keys can also hold shape key action data blocks, which is different from actions. It’s a mess, and controlling everything is a big headache for users. From what I’ve tested so far everything will work, but managing everything falls onto you as user.

One problem that can’t be fixed is that when using shape keys (especially baked, or sampled) and Keymesh together and scrubbing through timeline, there are some twitches and delays. Nothing shows up in final animation, but since Blender needs to update mesh in multiple ways, this happens.

Also, this is not in the scope of the add-on, but as you know if you remesh you lose all your shape keys and attributes. But with Shape Keys you also can’t modify mesh in any way besides moving vertices. If you extrude, inset, loop cut, etc. expect some trouble. But if you model procedurally with Geometry Nodes or other modifiers everything is kept.

Shape Key support will be in the preferences and turned off by default, you can turn it on if you want.

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Update:

While I am leaving the option I implemented in previous comment in the add-on, turns out it’s not a good idea. Problem is Keymesh needs to update object on every frame, and so do Shape Keys, and when both are doing that updates are slow, and results in frames on which either Keymesh, or keyframes aren’t fully loaded. And it shows in final render too.

Instead, more destructive, but straightforward way is new operator that I implemented:

  • Shape Keys to Keymesh
    As name suggests, it bakes all shape key animation on Keymesh. Shape Keys are removed, and you can’t change them anymore (although backed up on separate object), and entire shape key animation is turned into Keymesh animation. That means you can sculpt on top of shape keys frame-by-frame.

I recommend this workflow for anyone who wants to combine the two, and I am one of those who does it.

https://i.imgur.com/JMOIacq.mp4

  • Convert to Separate Objects
    I also implemented this new feature that converts Keymesh animation into separate objects. That is very good tool for anyone who wants to 3D-Print animated objects for stop-motion animation.

ice_video_20230924-220835

Model by MatMADNESS on Sketchfab.

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If you want to have better control of baking shape key animations you can use my other add-on Bake Shape Keys. I use both for my workflow. Bake Shape Keys will recieve update too very soon.

This one will let you quickly bake on twos, or threes and will turn animation into constant interpolation. Or you can do it manually with other tools.

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