Preview States/Faces while building

[kevinsaucier]

The new 'Play' functionality on the submodels window is so handy. It would be great to have something simliar on the States and Faces windows. A little more complicated, as you'd have to be able to choose your state/face effect and it would have to respect the Force Colors, but you all are amazing and I have great faith! 👏

Thanks!

[AGFazio]

States/Faces are based on timing tracks, so I think this would not be an easy task. You already have a preview of each state or face in their respective model settings.

[kevinsaucier]

For Faces, of course you couldn't preview the actual singing but, right now, you can't see what the face looks like lit up when setting it up. You can see one line at a time, but you can't see the multiple outline/eyes and whatnot so it's hard to figure out what pixels need to be included where when trying to set the colors. Adding a drop down for phoneme, a checkbox for eyes open/closed, and a checkbox for 'Active' to start the preview would make it much easier.

For states, if you give a box for min/max timing mark and the millisecond spacing, you could similate a timing track just enough to see movement through the states.

Unless I'm missing something, I don't see a way to visualize my Santa's hand waving in this State. All of the pixels for all 4 states are lit in the preview no matter what I choose.

[heffneil]

Why couldn't you type a string of text or have sample of "Do Re Me Fa So La Tee Do" or something else that demonstrates all the phonemes?

[kevinsaucier]

Typing a string of text would require it to be broken down into phonemes so that's a little much for the faces dialog. You could have a premade string but, without you being able to hear the string as well, it would be hard to tell what it's doing. I'm just looking to preview the entire face at once so picking a single phoneme/eye state and lighting up the face in full would be a tremendous help vs the current setup.

[SopherConklin]

Previously suggested to show each "state" individually in #5345

[cybercop23]

WIP

StatePlay_BulkColor.mov

[cybercop23]

There's a new addition to use States as Outlines, just like the Sequencer, and a new way to multi-select what you want to light-up via ctrl-click. So you should be able to get all that you are looking for. See below and lmk your thoughts:

FacesMultiSelect.mov

[cybercop23]

FaceswithOptions.mov

[kevinsaucier]

Well, I'd say the 2nd video is basically what I was picturing for the faces. I like that better than yet another hidden-ish feature (the multi-select in the first video) that's very hard to surface, especially for new users.

It's hard to tell but are you able to edit the nodes while the faces stay lit? That was the end goal of my request. So, when designing say Eyes 2, you can see which pixels are lit up for Outline 2 so you know that you're picking the right pixels for the Bow (in Eyes 2). Maybe not a great example, but you probably get the gist.

One other small thing I've noticed that's come up recently. Would it be easy to control the pixel size in this window (and states/submodels)? Not permanently, just while viewing. For my HD props, I have the pixel size set to 1 but it makes it really difficult to see the pixels during this setup because they are tiny. A pixel size box up there with a number roller would easily address that. Just a nice to have at this point but figured I'd mention it.

Overall, I think this address the Faces part of my request. Nice work!