McNistor
What are the advantages of the current model over the proposed one?

It exists, it works, it is known & liked by animators.

digitallysane

McNistor
What are the advantages of the current model over the proposed one?

It exists, it works, it is known & liked by animators.

It's as if you didn't read the very next phrase after the one you quoted.

The fact that it exists and it is known is irrelevant and I don't even know why you chose to bring these truisms as arguments.

It works, as the geocentric model worked in explaining lots of motions, but upon close scrutiny it broke down - to be expected from a model that doesn't reflect reality.

It is liked by animators - sure, some of them like it (there are a lot of animators in AE which has keys closer to the proposed model and from what it looks, Toon Boom is not far either and there are many other more obscure apps probably), but I don't think they put too much thought into it. We all take for granted lots of things which comes with bad and good, but presented with option1 (current model) vs option2 (proposed model) along with their differences, most would probably come to like the proposed model.

And touching briefly on a previous point - I too am an animator. Sometimes, when I animate that is and being that for a long time I was a generalist, I was doing it rather often in the past. That's one individual that doesn't like it. Another is the OP. Marty didn't exactly expressed his preference one way or the other but referred to the current model as a potential mistake. I don't think it's an actual mistake, at the time it was implemented it was modeled after what others were doing and if history is not full of instances where the majority is in the wrong, I'll eat these words.
Jordi seems with one foot in one camp and with one in the other.

The proposed model reflects reality, which from the brief time I've been around here is referred to as Houdini like and while doing so, it opens up a few extra editing features.
Time for Houdini to get into 21st century and leave behind (not forget) the traditional animation and improve upon its techniques and concepts.

McNistor
The fact that it exists and it is known is irrelevant and I don't even know why you chose to bring these truisms as arguments.

What's irrelevant is flooding forums with nonsensical arguments for the sake of “being right on the internet”.

digitallysane
What's irrelevant is flooding forums with nonsensical arguments for the sake of “being right on the internet”.

You've lost the debate by arguing from a nonsensical position (frames have length, because who doesn't know, when you look at a jpeg you see a whole movie) and now you're throwing a tantrum.

I'll let you manifest your sourness, I have work to do - need to create a thread addressing the tweak/edit tool problems.

McNistor
I'll let you manifest your sourness, I have work to do - need to create a thread addressing the tweak/edit tool problems.

Hurry up, the devs need an adult to show them the way.

I see the original point. If you a scale a bunch of keyframes down to 1 frame in the timeline, you'll lose the keyframes . However, in the graph editor, you can scale the keyframes up and down and it doesn't get rid of the keys. It would be nice if the timeline worked the same as the graph editor in regard to the scaling….but…really, animating like that in the timeline? You should be doing that kind of stuff in the graph editor. The timeline is only good for roughing things in…same goes for Maya, Max, …

Jim Rutherford
but…really, animating like that in the timeline?

Yes @Jim. simply because of performance.

keyframes graphical representation in the timeline benefits from a simpler representation than in the animation editor.
in a production class environment (read feature film quality animation), animators dealing with tens of channels and hundreds of keyframes at the same time. that rich representation of splines, handles and … in the animation editor causes computationally overheads when the number of scoped channels increases. so it happens many times, overall keyframe positioning being down in the timeline which is not just limited to first stage roughing, rather can happen many times in a work day, and then dealing with a limited number of channels in the animation editor for more local editing.

if maya benefits from another editor for handling animation data, that is named “trax editor”, it is another level of simplification than even timeline for showing animation data, which boosts the performance. here we see a bunch of keyframes that the number of them can be hundreds just as a stretchable box (a clip) in the trax editor (beside the main duty of this editor that is the non linear editing)

actually true answer to this question is a combination. a consecutive usage of animation editor and timeline.
not just setting keyframes in the timeline at first stage and then dealing with keys afterward in the animation editor forever, without going back to the timeline.

if i suggested implementation of a timeline version of tuner (retimer) in the first post attached picture, actually it is implying to this fact:
PERFORMANCE INCREASE when dealing with tens of dense fcurves for easier overall retiming of keys without seeing those fcurves.

Call me old fashioned but good planning, timing out your animation, blocking in your keys, using the dope sheet and finessing in the graph editor is the only practical way to go. When I see people doing straight ahead pose animation on each frame, I get the heeby geebies.

sorian
PERFORMANCE INCREASE when dealing with tens of dense fcurves for easier overall retiming of keys without seeing those fcurves.

Can I ask why you didn't you simply post the following two issues to Support? You don't appear to be looking for input from the community, you're holding to your original points regardless what people write.

Rfe: add floating point key representations to the timeline

Bug: scaling keys in timeline causing all keyframe data to be lost when scaling to one frame.

Jim Rutherford
Call me old fashioned.

veterans come from old fashioned people. we always respect them

Jim Rutherford
but good planning, …

sometimes we need importing a good planned pose to pose animation clip from our library, bake it for concatenating to another good planed pose to pose animation, now think about some more iteration of this process, and plus some overall editing of them to satisfy that specific shot needs till to get unique.
just think about that our run cycle continuation, in a long run must be matched to a curved path (no straight running) and without any foot sliding on the ground, plus some additional clips attached to it.
you see, we are getting forced to go toward doing that damn straight ahead animation lightly, so unfortunately we all get heebie jeebies sometimes


indeed @Jim, having something better never doesn't hurt anybody. :wink:

MartybNz
Can I ask …

i am in the middle of preparing a list of RFEs for support beside these three, not two (1.add floating point key … 2.scaling keys … 3. tuner(retimer) tool …) if i find enough time to finish.
some of them need some considerations to be pretty understandable for the devs, also to be clear for me they are certainly bugs.

meantime, posting to support doesn't prevent replying to people in the forum.

sorian
meantime, posting to support doesn't prevent replying to people in the forum.

Right, so you are aware that a title such as the one is this thread alienates the current users of Houdini… what may be okay in the ‘SI forums’ doesn't go down as well as in the normal forums and doesn't support the following:

sorian
veterans come from old fashioned people. we always respect them Smile

i'm not a SI user, so i put this in the “Lounge” section.

i can not find relation of the thread title and not respecting to the highly talented respectful people around here. these are completely two different subjects.
do you want we suppose houdini has always been most complete package in all fields from the beginning without any need for any improvement and any discussion?
also admin can change the thread title if it doesn't obey from the forums rules.