animation talk.

Monkey Archive Forums/Monkey Discussion/animation talk.

Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#1]
there are a couple of really interesting projects on the go at the moment id like to talk about or just air my opinion on, and their all about animation, I beleive skn3 is doing one that allows for bonned 2D sprites which is cool.

Some one else is doing another along the same lines, and there is a semi pro version of the same thing on kickstart, so its clearly a concept thats really starting to force its way into the collective.

So I was wondering, from these types of projects what would you like, or hope to get.

I for example would love a new file format, that works like an animated gif, but has extra data packed into it allowing people to set sections as different animations much like how you do with 3D mesh's

The file format could also pack information like framerate, or delay per frame, normally we set a timer and advance the frame at the right time, but would it not be so much better if that information is simply part of the animation.

With a file format like this, and a module to go along with it, you could simply loadanim() and the playanim(die) or playanim(shoot), then calling updateanim() each update.

has anyone done, or is anyone doing anything like that ?


muddy_shoes(Posted 2012) [#2]
I've no special tooling or public module, but my animations are currently defined in JSON like this:

{ "anims": [
        { "name": "test1",
           "frames": ["tf1.png","tf2.png","tf3.png","tf4.png","tf5.png",
"tf6.png","tf7.png","tf8.png","tf9.png","tf10.png"],
           "fps": 10.0,
           "timer": "GAME",
           "type": "LOOPING"
        }, ... ]}


FPS is the framerate, and timer defines which timing mechanism it uses (so you can have animations that keep running while the game clock is paused, for example).

When Spriter is released I'll probably switch to using that as long as it offers plugin functionality that I can use to do things like the timer source.


Samah(Posted 2012) [#3]
When Spriter is released I'll probably switch to using that as long as it offers plugin functionality that I can use to do things like the timer source.

And you can use the module therevills wrote for it :-)


AdamRedwoods(Posted 2012) [#4]
too bad adobe flash can't export animated svg (SMIL). it has a nice bone and onion skinning system.


Beaker(Posted 2012) [#5]
I've made a monkey Grapefrukt importer library. It's one way to get your Flash animations into monkey:

Example (using one of the grapefrukt example animations):
http://beaker.powweb.com/grapefrukt/MonkeyGame.html

Grapefrukt website:
http://prototyprally.com/introducing-the-grapefrukt-asset-exporter/

monkey project:
http://beaker.powweb.com/grapefrukt/grapefrukt.zip

It works pretty well, but I'm not sure it supports hierarchical skeleton type animations. Better than a poke in the eye tho.

Enjoy.


Skn3(Posted 2012) [#6]
Hey I saw this topic but was away in Ireland so couldn't really reply in any detail!

I am indeed working on an animation system which will have similarities to the spriter format. Infact I may even support the spriter format by exporting to it. At least that way I can gain a large potential audience of existing spriter users!

I definitely will be supporting a file format that lets you build animations into a container!

The Objecty editor will allow you to create animations and objects and then there is an exporter api that gains full access to a filestream, node structure and image canvasses. It is therefore pretty damn easy to write whatever file format you desire! All of the data available to the Objecty runtime is also available to the exporters and its all node based. So if there is a hotspot or animation frame then these are simply node classes that have certain attributes and tools attached to them.

I am currently producing a campaign video to start an indiegogo project so I'll be sure to post more details soon!