The initiative aims to gradually improve the software's animation tools over a three-year period.
The Blender Foundation has recently unveiled Animation 2025 – a new project with the goal of gradually improving and enhancing Blender's rigging and animation tools over a three-year period. Aiming to provide animators with a robust toolset, the initiative is set to start on January 1, 2023, and run until the end of 2025, with the newly added features being merged into the software along the way.
During the first year of the initiative, the company plans to build prototypes of the new systems, prioritizing the Rig Explainer, 3D Onion Skinning, and Rigging/Constraint Nodes, which would then "be implemented in a way that compartmentalizes those aspects that depend on the current implementation of Armatures, Actions, etc."
In 2024, the team aims to overhaul Blender's Armatures, Actions, and Objects in accordance with the 2023 data, planning to allow multi-object animation, better data handling, layering of animation data, and more. As for the Animation 2025 project's final year, the developers didn't share any concrete plans regarding it, only intending to add "more usable cool stuff."
"These plans are BIG, and we are excited to have the opportunity to work on them," states the team. "Three years is likely not enough time to implement all of it, but with a team working on this for three years it’s certain to have a big impact on Blender."
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