Junction-Earth wrote:Using splines is a terrific way of creating automation. It gives you ability to manually draw very "exact" automation and also draw triangle, square and also sinewaves on any automation-parameter. But, Richard no doubt understands this.
Generally speaking, you can draw all that with the current tools Orion has, say line for example. Drawing them isn't the problem, both current automation and splines are capable of that, it's that "exact" part that is. You can have splines, but if not done right, all you'll get is just another drawing tool. The exactness would come from its other features... snapping comes to mind as one, and multi-selection as another, which aren't currently possible in Orion.
I'm mean, he "developed" Orion
I don't mean to come off as rude or anything, but does that actually sounds as it seems?
Don't get me wrong, but adding it in the quote marks kind of sounds like you're implying he didn't actually developed Orion.
I was hoping for that kind of automation for a while in Orion. Before I got a copy. But I realised that Orion doesn't stand or fall by the fact that it's missing it.
But I think it still kind of lacks it. Or something compared to splines.
Like many of us here, but that's up to Rich. He's been presented with various options, and it's been asked many, many times, so we'll see what and if anything will come out of our constant bugging
1.
Better copy-ability on a selected region of automation. There should be a start/end point selection tool to copy a selected piece of automation. Then you select a startpoint for "paste" operation. All overlapping automation should be zero:ed and totally overwritten by the pasted automation info.
I think it was Bones (and in case it wasn't him, I apologize since I can't really remember who) that once suggested Loop range could serve for the purpose of determining the range as a selection, which wouldn't be bad at all when you think about it. It would still add a feature without making some major changes.
2.
Similar to above Orion need a better "sliding tool" to slide a selected region forward or backwards. Using a selected region with a startpoint and endpoint. Sliding should be done by keeping selected region floating until final position is selected. This way the slide can be done outside of a patterns length or beginning. Parts of slided region that didn't fit within pattern or song simply ignored and just deleted.
Sliding would be nice, agreed.
The song events sliding wouldn't be much of an issue. If you could slide it anywhere in the timeline, it wouldn't matter, because there isn't any boundary or anything to hold the automation from sliding. The pattern events, on the other hand, are a bit of a brain teaser, and deleting what doesn't fit within it - well, that kind of comes on as a "destructive editing". Imagine you had a quite complex automation drawn and you want to slide it just a bit, and all of a sudden parts get deleted.
3.
A spline drawing tool. Yes. But NOT a splined automation!!! But rather a "spline drawing tool" that is drawn and then immediately rendered to automation values native to Orion. The user draws a complex spline and when it's seems ok, accepts the shape and then it's converted to normal automation values according to PPQ.
The spline could be set to have a max value of points. No problem. It's much more powerful to have it than not at all.
That was another Bones' (I think) suggestion. The principle of it is that the splines wouldn't replace current automation system, but like be on top of it, so when you change a point on the spline, it transpires to the automation drawing underneath.
Always important on all these functions is that the "pasted", "slided" or "rendered" values aren't blended with previous existing values that are overlapping in the region the new ones are pasted or created.
You mean like overwrite? I agree with that. Would be even better if undo worked for that
Junction-Earth wrote:The LFO tool is really nice and very "needed" but it somewhat lacks the same feature: The LFO tool can't be added to a "selected region" of song automation or a patternblock automation.
Or can it? If so I'm missing something...
Set the Loop point and you can apply LFO for song events, and of course be in song mode. Although, you can't apply more than 32 bars at the time. If your question would be why, the answer is simple: performance. It's been tested and verified that applying LFO on anything beyond 32 bars decreases the performance to the point of your computer literally choking, especially during playback. There's been cases (when the limit wasn't still set) where you'd had to wait for several minutes for automation to draw.
So, small solution to that problem was adding the 32 bar limit. The way you'd normally work with it is set the 32 bar region, add LFO, then just move the "Start" point of the Loop in the main toolbar (you don't have to draw the loop selection in the timeline all over again), and it just pushes the Loop range further. Then just re-apply the LFO.
Or in case you have option enable to copy/move song events (cfg in the playlist), then you can copy patterns (select patterns and then holding CTRL key just move them to new position to make copies), and automations copies with it.
Edit: Oh... almost missed to point out that my suggestions reside within the same context as "automation tracks" in the sence that if you have the right edit-tools, automation can be handled in a very good way without the need for separate automation tracks.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean.