3ds Max - Colored Timeline Segments

Description:

I'd like to see the ability to select portions of the timeline and add a color to them to help distinguish different portions of a given scene. It would help to easily identify where key actions are in a sequence.

How Used:

One small button (or similar interaction tool) would turn on/off the timeline color mode. In this mode, keys would not be able to be moved until the timeline color mode was turned back off. Similar to selecting keys, a user would drag an area of the timeline they wish to portion. 3ds will then assign a random color to that selection. Right-click functionality over any color segment could give the user the ability to split, delete, or change the color of that segment.

Feature Affinity:

Timeline display/appearance customization

Great Idea. I was just going to post a request for this! I have a scene with several different areas being animated that overlap a little. I have materials that are applied to objects in both areas that control their opacity via a sub/multi-map and cannot differentiate between opacity keys for the objects.

Yeah, ideally I'd like to see the ability to have "tracks" similar to post-production software like Premiere. Then you could add materials and/or cameras, maybe even objects, to one or more tracks. This would provide the ability to add multiple materials to the same object. If you want one animation to have the model semi-transparent, but another opaque, then you apply the transparent material to the object on one track and the opaque material to the same object on another track. Then you can render the specific track with out re-mapping anything. Kind of like Scene States, but more interactive...