The Walmart version not the "final" version as Mike indicated. They obviously had to get those boxes out to them well in advance.
--------
The sequencer... sliding layers and visibility
Mike explained this to me and it does make sense. Layers in AS are "always visible". Unless you key frame visibility or opacity they stay "on". If you slide a layer forward in time, it is still visible on frames before the "start" of that layer or that layer's "frame 0".
Mike and I sort of argued about this a teen tiny bit but as it turns out it makes sense now and I actually found a way to make it work exactly the way I want it to.
All you do is key frame the visibility off on frame 0 and on again on frame 1. Then you slide the layer around and it is exactly like the beginning is "off" by default. I will probably do a tutorial for this. I just figured it out about 5 minutes ago and it works like a CHARM.
So it is very very very very easy to set a layer to have a "block" of time where it is visible... you just key frame the visiblity off and on for a segment of the layer time line. Then you can slide it around on the time line and easily go back and change where the keys start and stop for visibility.
(cool tip: Right click in the time line view and slide the time line of a layer to offset it. You don't even have to use the sequencer. I LOVE THAT FEATURE!)
--------------
As for scripting enhancements... uh... yeah... not as much as I had hoped but WAY more than I expected. Probably more than Mike thinks. He apologized for not being able to do more script enhancements but what he did do is FANTASTIC. There will be enough new script enhancements to keep me busy for a long time.
What I discovered is that the new features in AS sort of... negate the need for a lot of access to the scripting. I don't have to "script" a new time line because the new time line is better than anything I could have done in lua.
By the way... you can copy and paste bones in the application now. COPY AND PASTE BONES!!!! How cool is that? That will save HOURS of work for me creating those head rigs. There's a "script" that isn't needed now.
There was one thing Mike mentioned about scripting that I haven't completely studied yet... but it did make me a bit light headed. He mentioned "walking the file". Any scripters out there might understand that concept... if it is what it sounds like... it could be really cool. No more "parsing the file format". Haven't played with it yet.
------
The key interpolation that was added is not just for bones... it's for EVERYTHING. So saving layer animation is going to be much easier. There are some old Macton scripts that do this sort of thing. I plan to revisit the code. Now with key interpolation included, an entire file... a whole dang file could have ALL animation saved out and loaded back in. That has been my dream for a while now.
This fits into my dream of creating a project management application for AS. It is those small tiny additions to the script interface that can have a HUGE GIGANTIC impact.
I am serious... when the key interpolation script access was added it took about ten minutes to fix my save and load bones script to use it. BANG! No more "parsing the file format". Yeehaaa.
------
Updating "old" scripts
The version of Lua in AS 6 is version 5.1. Anyone familiar with lua will know that some old ways of doing things in lua are gone from the newer version. They've been... what's the term... I forget the term... DEPRICATED... is that it? Anyway the looping through tables is slightly different but it's easy to fix. You use pairs and ipairs now instead of... whatever it was before. Took a few minutes to hunt down the code for this on google. All my bookmarks were for the "old" version of lua.
Many of my layer scripts required ZERO CHANGES. The custom script I created for my 2.5d head rig worked without any changes. The most changes are for tools, sorting through lists using ipairs and some minor changes in some strings at the "top" of the tool scripts. Compare an "old" tool with a "new" tool and you can see the changes that are needed.
Scripts also now have their own "resource" folder in the application. You keep images in there for interface elements. This is cool. I have yet to study this totally but it looks... cool. This means a script can reference an image or icon in the resource folder of the script folder. You couldn't do that at all before.
You can learn a ton just by looking at the tool scripts themselves. I've been making a list of differences by using a "diff" comparison in Jedit with the same tool from each version. I reverse engineered a lot of stuff just from that. I discovered the script "resource" folder that way. I saw a path string to this folder and almost fell off my chair.
-----
One key new feature in 6 is the "Sequencer". Sliding layers in the time line. Think about this for a moment. You need access to the DOCUMENT TIME and the LAYER TIME. They are different. So now there is a new "frame" script... thingy... for the frame of the document or the frame of the layer. The layer frame can be different from the document frame now due to sliding it in the timeline.
This is COOL as heck. My head spins with ideas on how to use that for scripting.
I anticipate that it will take a while to get a handle on all the new stuff that can be done with scripting. Hopefully many of the new features are included so THOSE can be scripted as well.
The future is so bright I'll have to wear shades.
-vern