Blender dev should focus on improving animation tools and docs (can't delete Actions)

Somehow I was not surprised when I discovered I couldn’t remove actions from the Action editor with Shift + X in 2.75 latest release.

That makes me wonder if BF ever evaluate their design decisions. First they made it where you lose your work if you don’t press F button. Then they force Actions in your throat without ability to remove them easily.

There are still no comprehensive docs on how to use NLA editor and create layered animations, how to animate non-slipping cycles with root in motion, etc.

Wouldn’t it be a great idea to polish animation section in Blender in one of the releases and make comprehensive documentation and practical application short tutorials about NLA, before 2.8x series ?

Another thing that I have been wondering about is mirroring pose along Y and Z. Why does Blender only allows mirroring pose along X axis? Why can’t we have mirroring along all 3 axes ?!

Removing actions works like most things in Blender. If the action doesn’t have a user, it is not saved.

If that was true for actions, I wouldn’t be posting it here :wink:

I made sure action has no user, and as soon as I hit Save, user was assigned automatically. I haven’t try removing user and then quitting because it’s plain sad - counter productive and non-intuitive.

Doesn’t happen for me. If the action is really a zero user data block (has a “0” before the name) and a user would be assigned just by saving without the user doing anything to assign a user himself that would be a bug an should be reported, IMHO.
Of course, that means you would have to erase actions from NLA editor in case you stashed them before.

Ok, I will report it.

I wonder why Shift + [X] (button) was removed. It was quite useful in 2.74.

Your actions are probably stashed on the NLA editor. 2.75 release notes has info on it.

It seems SHIFT+X does not work at all in 2.75a how it worked in 2.74 , you now have to additionally remove the action that had been stashed too from the NLA Editor to bring the action you want to remove to really have 0 users.

Basically if you only try to remove the action from the action editor, it will never have 0 user and so will never be eliminated from a save -> load in 2.75a , you need to delete it from the NLA editor too
I guess that’s what they meant by making more “safety measures” to avoid losing actions.

edit : i was too slow to post that , other people already mentionned it :smiley:

Now that sucks. Safety measure could have been Shift + click on X. Meaning data won’t be lost unless user deliberately chooses to remove it. Now it will take a way more time to clean up stuff than it should be :confused:

Am I doing something wrong? o.O

Please let me know so I could file a bug report.

P.S. I had to go back to 2.74 just to clean up Action Editor.

100% agree you should be able to delete the action from the action editor alone, shift X was fine (although a bit obscure)

The problem is that I can’t delete it from anywhere :confused:

I wonder if devs can see this thread - had no luck getting a hold of them on IRC last night.

I agree that having to manually remove the F and SHIFT + click on the X was far enough non-accidental manipulation to delete an action.

Now for your problem, i am not sure why your action do not get a 0 user assigned if you delete the stashed one from the NLA editor too, you’re better posting this on the bug tracker, the devs mostly do not really get out of the couple of news/discussions upper boards when it comes to Blenderartists.

On the bug tracker at least they will notice, just don’t forget to provide a blend.

open the NLA editor then select all (while in the leftmost bit) and press X

I don’t need to kill all Actions. Just the ones I don’t need. If I only remove the ones I don’t need in NLA, I still have F against Actions’ names and they don’t go away.

Reported!

https://developer.blender.org/T45554

You probably know this already but I’ll say it anway; F is a “fake” user you manually turn on and off so make sure its turned on of the actions you want and turned off for the actions you don’t. Then go into the NLA editor and delete everything (presuming you’re not using it for your project) and restart blender, the fake users you manually assigned on the actions will keep them safe. You also might need to shift x them and make sure you don’t have an action you want removed the current selected action in the action editor or it will keep that.

I know the concept quite well, as I had run-ions with it relating to animation a while back several times.

Apparently you didn’t watch my video, where the bug clearly shown - it’s not possible to delete Actions in 2.75a, no matter what anyone recommends here.

You might want to record a video proving me wrong, by I am 100% certain you will be like “WTF?!” when trying to delete actions and they keep coming back, in 2.75a.

I found it a bit hard to follow sorry. Here’s my video (probably equally as hard to follow) https://youtu.be/Z3H_RDnDf-g

“accidently duplicate action multiple timesrestart to get rid of them
still there!!
delete from NLA editor
restart
gone!”

There lies the issue - if you duplicate actions, and don’t assign users to them, yes, they can be deleted. However, as in my case, if you assign user to an action, it can no longer be deleted using your test case!

How do you assign users to them? pressing F? In your video I don’t understand why you go though removing the F then revert to autosaved file so undoing the previous step, the F is back in the file because you didn’t save.
I can remove the actions with F before them in my file by removing the F then deleting from the NLA editor