Maniphest T68988

Graph Editor: Automatic Colours can be confusing
Confirmed, NormalDESIGN
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Assigned To
None
Authored By
Sybren A. Stüvel (sybren)
Aug 21 2019, 4:03 PM
Tags
  • BF Blender
  • Animation & Rigging
  • User Interface
Subscribers
Hjalti Hjálmarsson (hjalti)
Luciano Muñoz Sessarego (looch)
Nacho Conesa (Nanoide)
Pablo Fournier (pablico)
Pablo Vazquez (pablovazquez)
Sybren A. Stüvel (sybren)
William Reynish (billreynish)

Description

Problem: when there are many curves, the mapping from X/Y/Z/W to colour is inconsistent. For example, the same hue can be used for X in one bone and Y in another.

Proposal: No concrete proposal yet, apart from the desire to have consistent X/Y/Z/W colours. The colour generator code could be altered to always produce the same hue for the same RNA array_index, for example, or use array_index/array_length.

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StatusSubtypeAssignedTask
 ConfirmedDESIGNNoneT63725 Module Owners Todo's (parent task)
 ResolvedTO DOSybren A. Stüvel (sybren)T63901 Animation & Rigging Module
 ConfirmedDESIGNNoneT68988 Graph Editor: Automatic Colours can be confusing

Event Timeline

Sybren A. Stüvel (sybren) lowered the priority of this task from 90 to Normal.Aug 21 2019, 4:03 PM
Sybren A. Stüvel (sybren) created this task.
Sybren A. Stüvel (sybren) mentioned this in T63901: Animation & Rigging Module.
Sybren A. Stüvel (sybren) assigned this task to Pablo Vazquez (pablovazquez).Aug 21 2019, 4:43 PM
Sybren A. Stüvel (sybren) added projects: Animation & Rigging, User Interface.
Sybren A. Stüvel (sybren) added a subscriber: William Reynish (billreynish).
Luciano Muñoz Sessarego (looch) added a subscriber: Luciano Muñoz Sessarego (looch).Aug 22 2019, 1:14 PM

I feel this is a problem easily solved by always coloring XYZ the same RGB but just when W is present have a color for it instead to recognize it, instead of of now having XYZ euler one set of colors and and WXYZ (quaternion) an other set of colors.
Also GROUP colors off should be off by default as they really dont help at all looking at the graph editor.

Sybren A. Stüvel (sybren) added a comment.Aug 22 2019, 2:23 PM
In T68988#760156, @Luciano Muñoz Sessarego (looch) wrote:

I feel this is a problem easily solved by always coloring XYZ the same RGB but just when W is present have a color for it instead to recognize it, instead of of now having XYZ euler one set of colors and and WXYZ (quaternion) an other set of colors.

That is a good idea, but is limited to rot/loc/scale properties. The implementation should cover anything that can be animated.

Also GROUP colors off should be off by default as they really dont help at all looking at the graph editor.

Those colours will be part of a different proposal @Nacho Conesa (Nanoide) is working on.

Luciano Muñoz Sessarego (looch) added a comment.Aug 22 2019, 2:33 PM

well maybe we should define some color coding for custom props, other for "other props" and xyz, just dont do random because in this case random just doesnt help it gives you a pattern that you need to not follow

Pablo Vazquez (pablovazquez) added a comment.Nov 7 2019, 3:36 PM

+1

A low-hanging fruit that will make life much better. Implementation wise I'm not sure but as long as it provides consistent colors for XYZW then it'll be miles better.

William Reynish (billreynish) added a comment.Nov 8 2019, 2:41 AM

The only thing I would add, as that for quats, the XYZW channels really mean something quite different from normal Euler XYZ. One could argue that it’s better to use a separate color scheme for quaterneons.

Sybren A. Stüvel (sybren) added a comment.Nov 8 2019, 10:48 AM

One could argue that it’s better to use a separate color scheme for quaterneons.

👍 on that one

Sybren A. Stüvel (sybren) moved this task from Backlog to TODOs on the Animation & Rigging board.Feb 17 2020, 5:50 PM
Luciano Muñoz Sessarego (looch) added a comment.Feb 17 2020, 6:50 PM

I'm not sure that i would give quats entirely different color scheeme i would do RGB for XYZ and add a color for W, because it makes it really hard to figure out the axis if you already set that color coding through the blender interface and even more through every sort of convention ever.
but yeah I dont know the reasoning behind wanting to make it different.

Sybren A. Stüvel (sybren) removed Pablo Vazquez (pablovazquez) as the assignee of this task.May 11 2020, 1:38 PM
Sybren A. Stüvel (sybren) added a subscriber: Pablo Vazquez (pablovazquez).
Sybren A. Stüvel (sybren) moved this task from TODOs to Design on the Animation & Rigging board.Oct 20 2020, 12:22 PM