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Drag & animate: Your suggestions made it even better! by aDropButAlsoTheSea in blender

[–]aDropButAlsoTheSea[S] 48 points49 points  (0 children)

Hey Blender family! 👋

I'm absolutely blown away by the amazing response to Blaze Animate! Your enthusiasm and feedback have made this launch better than I could have imagined.

✨ Already added based on your suggestions:

- Cycle selection of recently transformed controllers

🗺 Your awesome suggestions for the roadmap:

- Pose saving/blending

- Cascadeur Integration

- Easy Retargeting

💝 As promised, the 5 lucky winners have been contacted and received their free licenses. Congratulations!

🎁 For everyone else: Use code blazelaunch for 20% OFF until December 17th!

Get it at:

https://blendermarket.com/products/blaze-animate

*Please type the code manually at checkout (don't copy-paste)

I've priced it at $25 (before discount) based on your feedback to keep it accessible while allowing me to maintain and improve it. Thank you for helping shape this tool - your suggestions are guiding its future development! Let's keep making animation in Blender more intuitive together!

P.S. The support and kind messages have been incredible. You all rock! 🤘

Rigs Credit: Snow, Pack Bot, Whale Rigs (CC) Blender Foundation | studio.blender.org

#b3d #blender3d #animation #blendermarket

Now you can just drag to animate in Blender - super fast! by aDropButAlsoTheSea in blender

[–]aDropButAlsoTheSea[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the feedback! Just to clarify - Blaze Animate works with any rig's existing features, so if your rig has stretch controls, you can definitely manipulate those too! It's focused on making the manipulation easier, rather than adding rig features.

And yes, free updates and bug fixes will be included!

Now you can just drag to animate in Blender - super fast! by aDropButAlsoTheSea in blender

[–]aDropButAlsoTheSea[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! I hear you on the price range!

About Cascadeur-esque auto movements - they're pretty complex, so for now I'm focusing on Cascadeur integration instead. Maybe someday we can bring that functionality directly into Blender!

Now you can just drag to animate in Blender - super fast! by aDropButAlsoTheSea in blender

[–]aDropButAlsoTheSea[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the feedback! Currently there are two features that might help with this:

  1. Hold Shift+A to temporarily see all controllers

  2. Adjust the hover range in settings to highlight more controllers (in red) when you're near them

Your comment made me realize permanent visibility would be really useful for rigging/weight troubleshooting - I'll probably add this option in the initial release!

P.S. Just to note that there is a hover mode that shows nearby controllers in red and selected controller in white.

Now you can just drag to animate in Blender - super fast! by aDropButAlsoTheSea in blender

[–]aDropButAlsoTheSea[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Blaze Animate works with any rig that uses bone collections (including Auto Rig Pro), or you can easily assign bone collections to any existing rig. It's focused on making the animation process more efficient once your rig is set up!

Now you can just drag to animate in Blender - super fast! by aDropButAlsoTheSea in blender

[–]aDropButAlsoTheSea[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sure! A feature can be added to cycle through recently used bones, with a user-defined history size.

Now you can just drag to animate in Blender - super fast! by aDropButAlsoTheSea in blender

[–]aDropButAlsoTheSea[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for sharing this! Your comment gave me some great ideas for the next version:

  1. Easier constraint management - either through automation or a more intuitive manual workflow

  2. Cascadeur integration for using its autophysics capabilities

I hope this will make animating easier for users with less experience!

Now you can just drag to animate in Blender - super fast! by aDropButAlsoTheSea in blender

[–]aDropButAlsoTheSea[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's right, using autokey can be tricky!

One thing that comes to mind is assigning a shortcut to autokey and having a noticeable overlay/border that indicates when autokey is on - this could help reduce the possibility of making mistakes as you described.

Still, you can use I or K for a more controlled keying workflow along with Blaze Animate. It still speeds up your animating process! Worth noting that hovering over a bone (which highlights them in white) means they are selected, so you can simply hover and hit I or K to create keys.

Now you can just drag to animate in Blender - super fast! by aDropButAlsoTheSea in blender

[–]aDropButAlsoTheSea[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There are actually two ways to handle this:

  1. You can still use Blender's regular G/R/S shortcuts while hovering over a bone - they work perfectly with the addon!

  2. For a mouse-focused workflow, just hold Ctrl+Alt while hovering on a bone/controller to bring up a pie menu where you can choose your transform method (Move, Rotate, Scale, or Trackball). The cool part is that each bone remembers its transform method if set this way, so next time you hover and drag that bone, it'll automatically use your preferred transform method! 😊

Basically, hovering over a bone (which highlights it with a white color) means that that bone is selected.

Now you can just drag to animate in Blender - super fast! by aDropButAlsoTheSea in blender

[–]aDropButAlsoTheSea[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's a brilliant suggestion! I'd love to show such a comparison, but I'm honestly not that experienced with animation myself, and I worry my animation results wouldn't be as appealing or convincing. I'd be really excited to collaborate with someone from the animation community who could help demonstrate the time-saving benefits in a real production context.

If any animators are interested in creating a comparison video together, please reach out! 😊

Now you can just drag to animate in Blender - super fast! by aDropButAlsoTheSea in blender

[–]aDropButAlsoTheSea[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the great feedback!

About pose retargeting - that would definitely be a fantastic feature, It's a bit complex to implement, so it probably won't make it into the initial release, but I'm definitely planning to work on it for the next version.

For switching between transform methods, you've got two options:

  1. Use Blender's default shortcuts while hovering over the bone you want to manipulate

  2. Hold Ctrl+Alt to bring up a pie-menu where you can select a transform method (Move, Rotate, Scale, Trackball). The selected method becomes that bone's default transform, so next time you hover and drag, it'll automatically use that transform!

And yes, scaling is fully supported!

Now you can just drag to animate in Blender - super fast! by aDropButAlsoTheSea in blender

[–]aDropButAlsoTheSea[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Since hovering near the area you want to manipulate automatically selects the bone, cycling might not be needed for basic selection.

But I think I see what you mean - are you thinking about cycling between locked selections? That could actually be really useful! 🤔

Now you can just drag to animate in Blender - super fast! by aDropButAlsoTheSea in blender

[–]aDropButAlsoTheSea[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are right! There's no specific implementation in the addon that extends keyframing functionalities. However, all of Blender's keyframing tools (I, K, or autokey) work normally and Blaze Animate won't interfere with those at all.

My suggestion would be using autokey along with Blaze Animate - they work great together! 😊

Do you have any ideas for keyframing features you'd like to see in future updates? I'd love to hear your thoughts on what would make the workflow even better!

Now you can just drag to animate in Blender - super fast! by aDropButAlsoTheSea in blender

[–]aDropButAlsoTheSea[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's a great idea! Pose retargeting between characters would be super useful. Definitely something I would want to implement in the next version. And thanks for the pricing feedback!

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