Development snapshots for 0.64.1 **Bones branch included**

Sorry Carlos - I’m using

Development version:
Revision: 20130826
Branch: master
Revision ID: 034175

Built on Aug 26 2013

This is something I’ve been seeing sometimes when I re-open this dev version of Synfig Studio after I’ve had crashes:

snapshot1.png

I can’t open the bone file. I’m on Windows 7, using Synfig version 0.64.0. Here’s the error report: error message report

Development snapshots for 0.64.1 **Bones branch included

To play with bone you have to do it in Dev version of synfig studio.

Oops! It’s even in the title, lol. Unfortunately, there’s no dev version for windows, only for Linux and Mac it seems.

The latest development version for windows is published here - Konstantin's weekly report #4

Thanks Zelgadis! Love the new bones feature, really amazing to see this in Synfig finally.

Please consider that the bones feature is VERY experimental and might change in the future versions. That could result your files won’t open correctly in the future versions.

You need patience to set them up, but once you’ve rigged something the bones feature is absolutely excellent - it’s got huge potential and would have saved me an enormous amount of time in the past.

The only two problems I’ve found is always making sure that my Origin is (0,0) for my regions and outlines, and the unwanted Bones that are created automatically are annoying. It’s also good to turn off tangent ducks before you start creating Bone Influences.

But in terms of how it works, it creates really good results, and you can get really nice “squashiness” so your animation doesn’t look like animated cut-outs. I was confused by Alt+7 not working in KDE on non English keyboards, and the difference between set-up values and current values could be clearer.

I was planning to use bones on things I’m working on now, but if it’s not sure my files will open in future I won’t do this now.

Fantastic stuff!

Thank you for detailed feedback, DaveJ!

Yes, there is a high probability that the Skeleton layer will go away and will be replaced by Bone layer. Though, we can’t give any estimation when this will happen.

Thanks for the warning. I’ll keep my bone use limited.

I have done a skeleton layer wiki page
wiki.synfig.org/wiki/Skeleton_Layer
compiling some flavour of this thread … adding a little warning about “experimental feature stage”

bones(:ya!

OK, I see the problem here. We are going to ship the experimental bones feature, which is most probably going to change in the future versions (breaking the user’s files). Of course we will put a warning at the release notes at the official website… but really, how many users read release notes?

There is high probability user will download Synfig from some third-party site, then he will start looking around for new features and… “whoa, Skeleton layer!!!” - he says, and of course will use it without care.

So, how should we deal with that situation? I think we need make sure that people use Skeleton layer only if they clearly know what they do.

My suggestion is to hide skeleton layer from “New Layer” menu by default in 0.64.1.
But for brave users we can add environment variable, which will tell Synfig to unhide Skeleton layer in menu. (I am talking about menu entry only, the layers in the document will remain available independently of variable state).

We already had a set of similar variables in the past - wiki.synfig.org/wiki/Environment_Variables
So my suggestion is to introduce SYNFIG_ENABLE_BONES variable,

how about add a beta string to the Skeleton Layer Icon to warn our users this is not a stable function, and will be changed in the feature?

Blender has this problem and solves it by having an “Enable Experimental Features” check box which enables and disables features included for testing.

I agreed here. And a blocking warning dialog whe the check box is enabled.
-G

OK, let’s make it an option with warning dialog. :slight_smile:

Hello:
I have an idea about the implementation of the bone-Skeleton layer.

I think it could be similar to the implementation of the layers that are categorized as “distortions” . Something like the warp o curve warp layer. A Skeleton layer that could be over a group of layers, and into the limits of the paths., like the real “bones” are into the “flesh”

  • The Skeleton layer could have a boolean “pose” attribute, that when activated could permit move the bones in the canvas and see how the bone “distorts” the geometry layers behind. To animate the Skeleton, the pose attribute should be activated
  • A boolean “edit” attribute that when activated could permit to add, delete, move, etc the “bones”.
  • An influence attribute, or maybe an influence geometry, because in some parts a problem could arise, in the junction of bones.

Sorry If I don’t give more help, the C++ code it’s hard to understand for me. But Could it be possible to re-use the code of the distortion layers?

Is it possible to make a video tutorial regarding this setup. It’s hard to understand by reading wiki pages. Please!

0.64.1 does not save. Win7 64bit

0.64.1 не сохраняет. Win 7 64 bit.