Blender Git Loki

Three new features:

1) Stride Bone

For walkcycles, you could already set an NLA strip to cycle over a path
based on a preset distance value. This cycling happens based on a linear
interpolation, with constant speed.
Not all cycles have a constant speed however, like hopping or jumping.
To ensure a perfect slipping-less foot contact, you now can set a Bone
in an Armature to define the stride. This "Stride Bone" then becomes a
sort-of ruler, a conveyor belt, on which the character walks. When using
the NLA "Use Path" option, it then tries to keep the Stride Bone entirely
motionless on the path, by cancelling out its motion (for the entire
Armature). This means that the animation keys for a Stride Bone have to be
exactly negative of the desired path. Only, at choice, the X,Y or Z Ipo
curve is used for this stride.

Examples:

http://www.blender.org/bf/0001_0040.avi
The top armature shows the actual Action, the bottom armature has been
parented to a Path, using the Stride Bone feature.

http://www.blender.org/bf/0001_0080.avi
Here the Stride Bone has a number of children, creating a ruler to be
used as reference while animating.

Test .blend:
http://www.blender.org/bf/motionblender1.blend

Notes:
- Note that action keys for Bones work local, based on the Bone's
orientation as set in EditMode. Therefore, an Y translation always
goes in the Bone's direction.
- To be able to get a "solvable" stride, the animation curve has
to be inverse evaluated, using a Newton Raphson root solver. That
means you can only create stride curves that keep moving forward, and
cannot return halfway.
- Set the Stride Bone in the Editing Buttons, Bone Panel. You can set
change the name or set the axis in the NLA Window, Strip Properties Panel.
- Files in this commit will move to the blender.org release section.

2) Armature Ghosting

In EditButtons, Armature Panel, you can set an armature to draw ghosts.
The number value denotes the amount of frames that have to be drawn extra
(for the active action!) around the current frame.
Ghosts only evaluate its own Pose, executing it's Actions, Constraints and
IK. No external dependencies are re-evaluated for it.

3) NLA/Action time control

If you click in the NLA window on the action (linked to Object), it makes
sure the Timing as drawn in the Action editor is not corrected for NLA.
If you also set the Object to "Action", this timing will be executed on the
Object as well (not NLA time).
(It's a bit confusing... will make a good doc & maybe review UI!)