Naming keyframes?

General Forums Blender Development Discussion
#1

One thing I miss when animating, is a dopesheet-like window where I can type some text/description of each keyframe. I’d like to select a keyframe by its customized name, for example by naming and describing keyframes and select by name instead of frame number.

I don’t know if this can be implemented in Dopesheet, if not then please let’s have a dopesheet like window where you select keyframes not by a number, but description/name.

Can we get this for Blender? If it’s already there, please let me know how to use it.

I imagine it could be like the dopesheet showing objects vertically, but instead of object names this new window will show the keyframe names on the left panel (vertical), and the numbers representing the timeline (horizontal).

#2

you can use timeline markers to do some annotation, also you can assign some colors to keyframes in the dopesheet like for keypose , breakdown ect…
But that’s a bit different from what you describe, maybe with some scripting there could be some workarounds.

#3

This is how I imagine it:

Say we have a panel to the left, with the number representing the keyframe dopesheet summary of all poses/keys for that frame.

The numbers indicate keyframes:

01: Text1 -1---------------------------------------
(10: Text2)---------------10----------------------------
25: Text3-----------------------------25---------------

Description (10: Text2):
“Some text for keyframe 10, Text2.”

Clicking on one of the keyframes/names will give you an editable text description of each keyframe, and you’ll also jump to that frame, of course.

#4

Well, that’s an interesting approach but I really think you should try out the markers that are in Blender as they are before you try changing them into something you are imagining. However, I’m sure there is a way to do what you want with an addon though.

They are actually really easy to use so I don’t really see the need to change them up so much. You basically go to the frame you want to add a note to, hit M (in the timeline view). To add a note select the marker and hit ctrl+M and a little box pops up and lets you type whatever you want. There’s also a bunch of things you can do with them like pose markers and binding Cameras to markers for quick camera takes. Pretty cool if you ask me.

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