Explore Channels as underlying animation paradigm

[sansumbrella]

Channels: stream of values with interpolation
Players: playhead referring to a channel
Connectors: timeline item connecting a player to an output

Working on this in the exp_channel branch.

Would like to be able to write something like:

channel = Channel<float>{ {1.0f, 0.0}, {Linear}, {10.0f, 2.0}, {Bezier, 0.2, 0.4, 0.8, 1.0}, {20.0f, 3.0} };
player = Player(channel);
value = player.step(dt);
values = player.sample(128, dt);

Channel<float> x, y, z;
…
player = Player<vec3>(x, y, z);
vec3 previous = player.value();
vec3 value = player.step(dt);

struct Transform {
  float x, y, z;
  quat orientation;
};

Channel<quat> orientation;
player = Player<Transform>(x, y, z, orientation);
Transform xf = player.value();

[sansumbrella]

Tricky part will be combining non-float values and unpacking into custom type constructors. Might need some kind of traits class or just a bunch of offsetof(Transform, orientation) and a non-type-safe writeTo method.

So more practically (for c++), looking something like:

Channel<float> x, y, z;
positionChannel = Player<vec3>(offsetof(vec3, x), x, offsetof(vec3, y), y, offsetof(vec3, z), z);
Player<Transform>(offsetof(Transform, position), positionChannel, offsetof(Transform, orientation), orientationChannel);

And we could provide some custom constructors for glm types so you can skip the offsetof business.