NewTek Discussions > LightWave 3D Support > General Support > Zoom factor animation: why is minislider disabled?
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Is there a logical reason for the minislider to be disabled when there's an envelope on the Zoom Factor?
Is there some reason I wouldn't want to use it??? I note the Position minisliders aren't disabled when animated.
Not sure what you are asking here but one thing to keep in mind when using envelops is that they overwrite any values you type in the input fields.
This makes the input fields appear ghosted which means they are being driven by the envelop.
Dont know why it works this way but it sure would be nice to have it availabe as a compliment to the envelop when it is engaged.
I'm not talking about the input fields, just the minislider.
Some dev went OUT OF THEIR WAY to make this inconvenient. I'm wondering if there's an actual reason. You can use the minisliders on pos/rot/scl when they're animated, why not the zoom?
I'm guessing its due to people not wanting to mess up their camera tracks if they mis-click on the envelope button. Makes perfect sense to me why you wouldn't want it to be enabled if you have an envelope on it in that circumstance. I wouldn't necessarily be a problem if there proper undos in layout, but until thats the case I actually prefer it being this way.
I actually fogged this as I thought it would be nice to have the minislider available. This way I don't have to add keys and adjust them in the GE. I can just do that with the minislider in the properties window.
I'm guessing its due to people not wanting to mess up their camera tracks if they mis-click on the envelope button.
If that were true, minisliders would ALWAYS be disabled for every animatable property. I'm not buyin' it.
I think it's just a stupid misfeature.
I would dearly like the option to lock channels (as we can do with positional channels by unticking their repsective letter X,Y or Z), for anything with an envelope, and to also allow them to be unlocked, as is the default with the positional channels but not so with the camera zoom. It's a pain to have to go into the graph editor, adjust the view to show the channel you want at a decent size, add a keyframe, move it to the correct postion etc. It is a small thing that constantly irritates me, often.
I agree with what kopperdrake said. Would be nice to have the ability to toggle anything that has an envelope button. I am guessing that could be a time consuming task though as it would require lots of internal plugins to have their code modified and UI adjusted to compensate for the new buttons.
Yes, i feel your pain on this one.
(spitballin' here) For any given TYPE of curve (xyz) the scale is the same, but AUTOFIT scales them to fill up the most usable area of the GE, minus some 'elbow room' for padding. BUT for differing TYPES of curves (pos/rot/scl/zoom) each set gets their own scale, maximizing the area again, and the scale area is blank. So, the zoom curve scale really has nothing to do, numerically, with the Position scale. When you move a key, the scale appears appropriate to that key: if multiple types, the scale remains hidden.
And this is all a USER OPTION, so ixnay on the iningwhey.
Oh, interesting: CURRENTLY, it's the last TYPE of channel selected that determines which units are displayed.