Have you tried hiding the toolbar and/or rows in the graph?
Yeah, I have tried it but the efficiency issue remains. Can't see what rows refer to which bone params when I have a large number of bones selected without clicking and jiggling keys and don't have any preferred presets so it's just an enormous struggle to work with all around at every step.
Also, being able to slide the bar to see what name and parameter a curve represents would deal with some skeletons we get back from freelancers that don't rename bones. We have bone1, bone2, bone3, 4, 5...286,287,288 and we can't get them to do otherwise even though we know all the tricks to auto-parent and naming at the home studio. Having the bar as adjustable would be very beneficial.
I expect when you get an animation near completion that you'd use the graph to polish the curves.
Only in some cases. The finalizing stage really isn't overly particular for curves given that our characters are meant to be seen on a smartphone. Presets more than do the trick 99% of the time. I've linked a video ref of our game's battle animation.
BTW, are you applying curves as you create keys? Setting curves early on increases the cost of change. I'm sure you are used to your workflows, but FWIW it may be faster to block out the most important poses without thinking about set in-between poses, adjust timing, then do a pass in the graph to set curves.
Yeah, I block out when I can and apply curves after but my responsibilities are mostly doing revisions on pre-existing work now so that's not applicable with many tasks in the pipeline. Really, any pipeline that involves going from a rigger, to a freelancer, to a revisionist means that working from scratch is often out of everyone's hands. Presets are just leagues more efficient.
The game I'm working on in Spine 3.8 is out now if you're interested in animation reference, here's a link to the game.
https://youtu.be/8NgMgTcfMng?t=565
I've handled a majority of the in-battle character animations and bridged the technical issues with these characters that often have multiple character views in one skeleton. The number of bones and screen real estate that's needed for these.. while I can breeze through in 3.8, I would straight up refuse to animate in 4.0 and quit my job.
Meanwhile, for a different gig, I can animate in 3.8 but still have to export in 4 - so I started trying to get used to 4 and it's near unbearable for me. I animate in 3.8 on my computer then send to my laptop which has 4 to export.
Also, have you tried the favor workflow? It can be very efficient and gives great results.
I'm sure the favor tool would be handy in some situations but at this point it's like trying to fix a leak in the sink and ignoring that a flood has already taken out the house.
This is all my personal experience and I'm aiming to be objective so I hope my frustrations aren't too overbearing. I'm grateful for your consideration.
Edit: Another note, the Dopesheet appears to be busted for scaling https://i.gyazo.com/182800e515b32ba0b7d55a98051985c5.mp4
it either only takes the end key in the selection, or it leaves the key on the end and only takes up to, but not including, the end key.
