requests and ideas to accelerate production

[Robert]

Hi all,

I'm sure that i'm not alone in this case. We spend our nights to make and unmake hundred of connexions and keyframes. Here are some requests to gain time and focus in important things.
The less we have to click the more we will be able to do.

Here are some of my requests :

1. Ability to merge animation inside another
Sometime it's more readable and efficient to get all the keyframes rather than just s1 to s2 transition of a nested animation.

2. Ability to get the original time of a nested transition
One example of use : sometime a part of the show is synchronised with an audio clip and a keyframe animation. If i want to embed this animation inside another keeping the audio synchronisation I have to tweak a bit. It could be nice to get the duration of a transition with a double click like quicktime movies control property.

3. Ability to open child animation clicking directly in nested transition

4. Merge to nested scene
Same way as merge to container but merge inside a subscene

5. Square selection in hierarchie window (by pity)
Like in the content windows. Sometime we have hundred nodes to select and it's a nightmare when you missed one.

6. Copy/paste of keyframe (just the basis)

7. Ability to block the position of content nodes
The way we present nodes connection explain what we do with but when we expand hidden ones all the visual structure is destroyed.

8. Ability to add anotation to link in content window
Comments and annotations make the project more easy to maintain.

9. Merge to content container

10. Global variables

11. Persistent variables
Some externalized variables could keep the last values we give to them like the shape surface.

12. More var type for Events argument
Sometime we need to pass string argument

13. Control property for movie advanced node like quicktime movie
Retrieve the duration of the movie with just 2 clicks

14. Scripts like photoshop for repeatable action

15. Color preset like fonts preset

Maybe we could make a poll ?

I'm curious to hear you about that.

@+

Robert

[Karol]

Hi Robert,

thank you for your detailed ideas and feedback!
We will implement some of your suggestions - but not in Ventuz 3 anymore.
Ventuz 3 updates will only get bug-fixes and probably some minor changes. We are now focused on the development of Ventuz 4.

1. Ability to merge animation inside another
Sometime it's more readable and efficient to get all the keyframes rather than just s1 to s2 transition of a nested animation.

We won't do that most probably. Nested animations have been implemented to gain a general view in the Anim. Editor. I think your suggestion would thwart that.

2. Ability to get the original time of a nested transition
One example of use : sometime a part of the show is synchronised with an audio clip and a keyframe animation. If i want to embed this animation inside another keeping the audio synchronisation I have to tweak a bit. It could be nice to get the duration of a transition with a double click like quicktime movies control property.

We put that on the road-map for Ventuz 4.

3. Ability to open child animation clicking directly in nested transition

Already on the road-map for V.4

4. Merge to nested scene
Same way as merge to container but merge inside a subscene

Rejected! What about Exposing, Externals and all the bindings in that subtree. This is pretty complicated. I'm sure that the result would never be as expected - so it's better to do it manually anyway.
Would it be better to use more Hierarchy Containers in the scene!?

5. Square selection in hierarchie window (by pity)
Like in the content windows. Sometime we have hundred nodes to select and it's a nightmare when you missed one.

Hmmm...!? Not that easy. I can put it on the road-map, but we have to analyze that in detail to see what the drawbacks are.

6. Copy/paste of keyframe (just the basis)

Already on the roadmap but we need a more detailed workflow scenario. What do you expect if you copy and paste keyframes or complete channels?

7. Ability to block the position of content nodes
The way we present nodes connection explain what we do with but when we expand hidden ones all the visual structure is destroyed.

Not that easy! What if you pin node A to position XY and in another selection, where node A is not visible anymore, you want to pin node B to the same position XY too? And if you have a selection where A and B are visible; what should the Content Editor show now?

8. Ability to add anotation to link in content window
Comments and annotations make the project more easy to maintain.

I will put that on the road-map as a feature-request.

9. Merge to content container

Already on the road-map. Will be definitely available in V.4

10. Global variables

11. Persistent variables
Some externalized variables could keep the last values we give to them like the shape surface.

For Ventuz 4 we are completely redesigning the concepts of Externals and adding new features to apply data to scenes and animation. With these new concepts it will be pretty easy to implement both requests.

12. More var type for Events argument
Sometime we need to pass string argument

Already on the road-map for V.4. We will extend the Argument to handle int, float and string.

13. Control property for movie advanced node like quicktime movie
Retrieve the duration of the movie with just 2 clicks

Already on the road-map for V.4!

14. Scripts like photoshop for repeatable action

Could you describe a practical use scenario? We currently have no idea in which case this would be useful.

15. Color preset like fonts preset

Already on the road-map for V.4.

Maybe we could make a poll ?

I'm curious to hear you about that.

@+

Robert

Best Regards
Karol

[Robert]

thank you for your detailed ideas and feedback!
We will implement some of your suggestions - but not in Ventuz 3 anymore.
Ventuz 3 updates will only get bug-fixes and probably some minor changes. We are now focused on the development of Ventuz 4.

1. Ability to merge animation inside another
Sometime it's more readable and efficient to get all the keyframes rather than just s1 to s2 transition of a nested animation.

We won't do that most probably. Nested animations have been implemented to gain a general view in the Anim. Editor. I think your suggestion would thwart that.

I'm not agree with you. I think it could be complementary. Maybe another way to do could be to have several Anim Editors.

4. Merge to nested scene
Same way as merge to container but merge inside a subscene

Rejected! What about Exposing, Externals and all the bindings in that subtree. This is pretty complicated. I'm sure that the result would never be as expected - so it's better to do it manually anyway.
Would it be better to use more Hierarchy Containers in the scene!?

My idea behind that would be to use subscene more like a oop class in a different way than Interfacing implementation.
Interfacing is very usefull but is not automatic. You have to manualy update the containers.
And I don't understand your problem with exposing and externals if you merge to a scene from a prepared hierarchy container.

6. Copy/paste of keyframe (just the basis)

Already on the roadmap but we need a more detailed workflow scenario. What do you expect if you copy and paste keyframes or complete channels?

The first thing would be to be able to paste it in the same channel but at a different time.
If we copy several channels we should be able to paste it since we select the same type of channels.

7. Ability to block the position of content nodes
The way we present nodes connection explain what we do with but when we expand hidden ones all the visual structure is destroyed.

Not that easy! What if you pin node A to position XY and in another selection, where node A is not visible anymore, you want to pin node B to the same position XY too? And if you have a selection where A and B are visible; what should the Content Editor show now?

idea 1. It could be a mix of "family" behaviour and fixed position. It could be a "super family" and maybe the nodes inside could be automaticaly fixed.
idea 2. Maybe the GUI could go in 3D

14. Scripts like photoshop for repeatable action

Could you describe a practical use scenario? We currently have no idea in which case this would be useful.

It's like a macro command.
For example :
1. If I have 30 times the same hierarchy structure connected to a main animation with a lot of keyframes. If I want to change a Movie Clip advanced node to a Movie Frame node for each of the 30 structures, actions is 30 times the same and it's spend time to merge each structure to interfaced container.

2. If I want to rename 30 containers + an index I have to do that 30 times.

If we could record the actions and playback it on another selection it could be fasten.

@+

Robert

[Robert]

"faster" rather than "fasten"

[squiggle]

Reading your suggestions I just realized there's also something else that I'd love to have:
Drop-Replace of nodes -- at least in the hierarchy-editor, but possibly also in the content-editor (see below).

Example: I placed a rectangle node in the hierarchy editor. Now I realize I'd much rather have a Circle. So I have to place the Circle, select the Rectangle and delete it (or the other way round). It's even worse when I want to change something within a hierarchy-branch, e.g. replacing a color node with a material node : in that case I have to Ctrl-selct the node to delete it (and pray that I really Ctrl-selected, because otherwise I'm going to delete the whole branch from the node on, because "undo" doesn't really work(*)).

Now imagine we could drop-replace nodes (like we "stamp" interfacing containers from the repository). Obviously there's a lot to consider... could you replace nodes that depend on additional content-nodes (e.g. a texture hierarchy node with it's corresponding mapping content node) with arbitrary nodes (an what happens to the content nodes then?), or would you only be able to replace nodes that stem from the same class of objects etc. On the other hand I guess you've already got a lot of that logic covered with the smart "interfacing" system...?

squiggle

(*) Did I mention "undo"? Oh boy would I love to have a functional "undo".

[Robert]

squiggle,

I'm agree with you for this feature.

And one more concerning the undo : maybe we could have a simple view of the history of the step we can go backward like in 3DS max. Like this we can make a decison to undo or not.

@+

robert

[calonpintar]

squiggle,

I'm agree with you for this feature.

And one more concerning the undo : maybe we could have a simple view of the history of the step we can go backward like in 3DS max. Like this we can make a decison to undo or not.

@+

robert

vote+1 for undo, specially for node properties

- hope it will be available in next ventuz version (currently v4 still no undo in properties window)
- and animated fbx i hope can be imported into ventuz
- i'm handling with mograph & 3d animation for years, ventuz is most handy real-time software at least for me i ever found...the market in real-time graphics + mograph is very promising, and forget about game engine, they are all totally at different world.