Dev:Ref/Release Notes/2.77/Animation

Blender 2.77: Animation

New Interpolation Method for Constraints

A new method to interpolate matrices was added to Blender, based on “Polar decomposition”. It gives much better results when interpolating non-uniformly scaled matrices, see the two animated gif below (they both show the same animation, where the influence of a constraint varies from 0 to 1).

Old 'naive' interpolation.

New polar decomposition based interpolation.

For those interested in technical details:

• Wikipedia’s page on polar decomposition.
• Matrix Animation and Polar Decomposition paper, by Ken Shoemake & Tom Duff.

Graph Editor

• "Cursor X" can now have fractional values when working with Drivers (6507249).
  When in the Drivers Mode, a dedicated "Cursor X" property (per Graph Editor instance) is now used instead of the current frame. As a result, it's now possible to snap the cursor to fractional values for greater snapping and editing control.

• Added options to Insert Keyframes operator to insert keyframes at the cursor point (1fbd742)
  This is useful when it is necessary to be able to precisely control the shape of driver F-Curves.

Dope Sheet

• Make frame range for new editor instances saner, by basing them on the current frame range (56e7291)

Armature

• Armature select similar now supports selecting children, immediate children and siblings. (a92bdfe0c917)
• Armature drawing: custom shape scale options - Custom scale:
  Avoids having multiple custom-shapes at different sizes.
  Option not to use bones length: So changes in edit-mode don’t resize the custom-shape. (894fd0c).

Motion Paths

• Clear Paths operator now clears paths on all objects/bones instead of just the selected ones (4e3d672)
• Update Paths button is now shown in the toolbar too (7320df2)