From BlenderWiki
History - Current Status
For many years, before Ton's animation recode in 2005, keyframes in the Action Editor were visualised as (rather ugly) rectanglular thingies. These didn't accurately show the timing of keyframes, and were not too descriptive.
Now, we have diamond shaped keys. Apparently they were modelled on the design of the marker icons. They show the timing more accurately, but that's all the info they display.
Goals
Come up with some scheme that works well to show the types of handles on keys as well as all the other information.
Interpretation of Keyframe Handles
Each keyframe has two handles. These two handles may either be of the same type or different types. Furthermore, one keyframe on screen may represent quite a few keyframes on many different ipo-curves.
Aligorith's Draft Scheme - No. 01
Selection Status
The difference between selection and deselection would be shown by the shape of the keyframe.
- Selected Keyframes would be shown as an 8-point star, with four of its points aligned to North-South-East-West
- Deselected Keyframes would be shown as a diamond (like now)
Keyframe Classification
The difference between one kind of a keyframe and another would be shown by the fill color of the keyframe. (Idea borrowed from Sony Vegas 6. See pdf manual page 279)
- Linear (white)
- Auto Smooth (gold)
- Hold (dark red)
- Beziere Decelerating (light green)
- Beziere Accelerating (light purple)
