== Action Editor - Groups for Action Channels (Peach Request) ==

Now, you can assign Action Channels to named (folder-like) groups, which help to organise the channels (important for more complex rigs). These are collapsible, can be "protected", and show a "summary" of the keyframes in the channels the Group contains. They are drawn as bright-green (active) or a darker shade of green (not active) channels.

* Each Action has its own set of Groups. 
* An Action-Channel can only occur in one Group at a time. It can also not occur in any group.
* Action-Channels can be moved between Groups
* Groups + grouped-channels always occur BEFORE un-grouped channels

Important Hotkeys:
* Shift-G  :  Adds the selected Action-Channels to the Active Group. This will create a new group if need be
* Ctrl-Shift-G : Always adds a new group, and adds the selected Action-Channels to it
* Alt-G : Removes selected Action-Channels from their groups
* Ctrl-Shift-Alt-G : (Note: this will be removed soon) This is a simple debugging-hotkey I added, which just prints a list of the groups, channels, and their addresses...
* NKey / Ctrl-LMB: While hovering over the name of a group, this shows a popup like for other channels, which allows the editing of the channel's name, etc.


Assorted Notes:
* Some tools may not work yet with this (Ctrl Numpad+/- for example)
* Fixed some bugs in various places in Action Editor code
* Added theme colours for group channels
* The nomenclature of these tools may change in future when a better alternative is found
* The ability to auto-assign action-channels to groups when they are keyframed will be coming up shortly

1 files changed, 4 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/source/blender/src/resources.c b/source/blender/src/resources.c
index 25295f4cd3c..0d22ce8744e 100644
--- a/source/blender/src/resources.c
+++ b/source/blender/src/resources.c
@@ -453,6 +453,8 @@ void BIF_InitTheme(void)
 	SETCOL(btheme->tact.hilite,  17, 27, 60, 100);	// bar
 	SETCOL(btheme->tact.strip_select, 	0xff, 0xff, 0xaa, 255);
 	SETCOL(btheme->tact.strip, 0xe4, 0x9c, 0xc6, 255);
+	SETCOL(btheme->tact.group, 0x39, 0x7d, 0x1b, 255);
+	SETCOL(btheme->tact.group_active, 0x7d, 0xe9, 0x60, 255);
 
 	/* space nla */
 	btheme->tnla= btheme->tv3d;
@@ -643,6 +645,8 @@ char *BIF_ThemeColorsPup(int spacetype)
 			str += sprintf(str, "View Sliders %%x%d|", TH_SHADE1);
 			str += sprintf(str, "Channels %%x%d|", TH_SHADE2);
 			str += sprintf(str, "Channels Selected %%x%d|", TH_HILITE);
+			str += sprintf(str, "Channel Group %%x%d|", TH_GROUP);
+			str += sprintf(str, "Active Channel Group %%x%d|", TH_GROUP_ACTIVE);
 			str += sprintf(str, "Long Key %%x%d|", TH_STRIP);
 			str += sprintf(str, "Long Key selected %%x%d|", TH_STRIP_SELECT);
 			str += sprintf(str, "Current Frame %%x%d", TH_CFRAME);