I had this amazing idea for Blender...

What if, for Blender, we had the ability to have multiple animators on the scene at once? Kind of like on a video game server, but in Blender. You could have multiple animators working on the same project at the same time. I think a good example of were this would be useful is if you were working on a fight scene with tons of people fighting all at the same time. (Not one animator controls one character, other animator controls the other kind of thing, but they all work on their fight scenes within the project) Or, if you had multiple people walking side by side, and you wanted each person to have their own unique walk cycle, having different animators do each person would be nice. Just a thought, I’m sure someone else has thought of this before me and I just haven’t seen it, but still, I wanted to share it. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

You are correct that it has been thought of before. There was even a (very) preliminary implementation by those outside the Blender Foundation (it’s called Verse). It is an interesting idea but, like a lot of “virtual reality”, I’m not sure there is a strong call for it in practice.

I can see some benefit in putting together game levels/worlds… but when it comes to animation, I think there isn’t much benefit to be obtained by people working on the same interactions at the same time. I alter Figure A’s pose based on Figure B’s current pose, but at the same time you change Figure B’s pose such that it’s now wrong. At least when building a level/world together, we can be altering different areas at the same time or one person modelling areas whilst the other follows up with texturing/ & lighting.

My opinion aside, given the plans for the next major development push (as discussed by Ton) - I don’t think this will get much/any focus for the next twelve months or so. Even if someone outside the Blender Foundation picks it up, they will need the Foundation’s blessing before any plans of merging with the code into trunk have viability.

I think having a animator, coder and artist working together over VR in a environment could save hundreds of man hours,

The bge specifically, because your could test - adjust animaitons, test - adjust code etc,

as for the artist, they could get design feedback in real time,

or hand a prop to the coder, who makes it work, and they start putting it in a level right then.

With a good referencing system this would not be needed. In Maya, we would sometimes animate one character each (another animator and I) - once in a while I would hit the refresh button on the reference object (the character being worked on by my buddy) and it would load with all the animation done so far by him.
However to be honest multiple people animating at the same time on the same shot pretty much never happens. We were students, so that’s why…

It never happens, because there isn’t any proper technology for it. If this WAS implemented though, this could happen, and I bet we could see very complex animated shots with lots of people on it at the same time.

This could roll project management,
team communications
and actual work all in 1 app.

that alone is reason for it.

Great idea. I think CRYENGINE has this feature.

Or maybe because there is no real need for it ? I’ll be the first to admit it sounds cool having a “public” scene where everyone can work together (kinda like Halo’s “forge” editor), but maybe not truly indidspensable. Do you have experience working with Maya’s referencing system ? It’s not real time sync like I said, but not far from it : with seven people in our team back on our graduation project it was a lifesaver.