Simple animation graph - Blender Add-on

This add-on brings together the fun of 2d animation and the power of 3D ! You can simply draw the trajectory of your Object/Bone, trace the spacings you want on that trajectory, and then press "Animate", and voilà, you just generated an animation !
Now you can apply the principles of animation visually, by placing the exact positions for each keyframe to create accelerations/decelerations and other effects.

I imagined this add-on first for my own use, for the blocking stage of my project, and with the help from a friend to develop this first version, we ended with a complete add-on. We have so many ideas to improve it for the next versions, but it already has most of the tools that could help for your animation projects ! I hope you will enjoy it, and maybe find some use cases that we didn't even think about !

Compatibility :
Works with Blender 4.1 and above (download on blender.org)

Installation :
- Save the add-on .zip file in a folder
- Open Blender, go to Edit > Preferences > Add-ons > Install button (on top)
- Browse to the folder and select the .zip file. Activate the checkbox on " Animation: Simple Animation Graph"
- The add-on appears in the vertical menu in the right side of the viewport (Shortcut "N") under the "Animation" tab

Creating an animation

1 - Select an object in Object mode or a Bone in Pose mode

2 - Select the Annotate tool.
- case A : To draw a trajectory in empty space, set the annotation placement to “3d cursor” and set the cursor to the selected Object or Bone (with shift + S > Cursor to Selected or with the shortcut “Cursor to Selected” we provide in the add-on Tools section) 

- case B : To draw a trajectory on a 3D surface, set the annotation placement to “Surface”

3 - Draw the trajectory. Be sure you don’t have any other drawn annotation on the current frame (you can use the “remove annotation frame” in the add-on Tools section to remove the existing annotations)

- To animate the rotation, draw the trajectory as a curve around the object.

- To animate the position, trace the direction from the object to the destination. With “relative trajectory” enabled in the add-on, you don’t have to start drawing exactly at the center of the object/bone. The animation will keep the offset between the object and the first intersection in the trajectory.

4 - Trace small intersections on the trajectory. Important : do not rotate the view while drawing the trajectory and intersections. This will place the intersections on the wrong distance.
Note that the animation keyframes will be generated only on these intersections. The parts of the trajectory with no intersections will not be taken into account. 

5 - Open the addon (in the vertical menu in the right side of the viewport under the "Animation" tab). Press Animate Position (Default shortcut : ALT+Shift+A) or Animate Rotation (Default shortcut : ALT+Shift+R). Play the animation to see the result.

Extra :
To animate position + rotation, follow the whole process to animate the position first, then go back to the first frame of the generated animation and follow the process to animate the rotation (you have to anticipate the movement from the position on the first frame)

Editing the trajectory

You can erase a part of your trajectory with CTRL+draw or use the “remove annotation frame” in the add-on Tools section

To edit the trajectory points before animating :

1 - In the add-on panel, Select Edit Trajectory > Edit Trajectory as Curve.

2 - Edit the points of the curve while you are in Edit Mode. Beware that the shapes of the lines between the points are not taken into account. The keyframes will be generated only on the points of the curve.

3 - Press Animate Position or Animate Rotation

Setting the speed/duration and interpolation

You can pick either a total duration for the animation, or a duration for each keyframe (timing by Step). The duration is by frame count.

Beware : if you draw a lot of intersections on the trajectory, the final animation can overlap the total duration by a few frames.

Interpolation : pick “Constant” for a stop-motion style animation, or linear/bezier for a smooth animation.

Advanced settings

Update 3d Cursor automatically moves the 3d cursor to the new object position after you have generated an animation with the add-on. This helps generate multiple animations faster.

Relative Trajectory allows you to draw your trajectory at any distance from the object you need to animate. The movement will be calculated while taking in account the offset between the object and the trajectory

Use Axis allows you to constraint the animation on only the selected axis. you can press “Preview Axis” to see an indication of the active axes on the active Object/Bone

You can also change the shortcuts of the addon in Blender's Edit Menu > Preferences > Add-ons > Search for "Simple Animation Graph"

And finally, you can also change the trajectory's color to see it better :). The color can be edited in the annotation top menu on the viewport

Common mistakes

Be sure to have only one tractory/annotation in the current scene and frame position before generating an animation.

Be sure that you activate all the X Y Z axis to in the advanced settings if you don’t want to constraint the movement

What's included in your purchase ?

- The add-on file
- Free updates for bug fixes and optimization