Effekseer

[BCj]

I don't know if this is the right thread but I had a question.
I loaded up some samples from the sample page of effekseer. Some of these, when exported, look like front-view attack animations. Is it possible to change like, the x/y or something in effekseer so they turn into side animations so I can use them in VX Ace?


I also found another thing. I had exported a sample, andwhile most work fine as animationsheets, this one stuttered majorly in vx ace, while it ran fine in effekseer. How could that happen?

 

[AfroditeOhki]

Try importing one of the RTP slash effects as an animated spritesheet

... Halp pls.
I can't, for the life of me, figure out how to do this


Edit: OF COURSE I figured out how just after I asked it. For anyone who might wonder, I followed this youtube tutorial - it's in japanese but easy enough to figure out.

 

[Kes]

Dumb question - a few days ago I put a background in, but now I want to remove it. Unfortunately I can't remember how I did that, so I don't know how to undo it. Could someone tell me please?
Thanks.

EDIT
Poster's curse - the minute I posted it I remembered, so this is now a redundant query.

 

[AfroditeOhki]

Ok if I want to document my journey learning this thing - should I do it here or open a dedicated thread? (And if so, in which sub-forum?)

 

[Kes]

@AfroditeOhki It might be easiest to pm a Mod and ask that.

 

[ravenhood]

@ShadowHawkDragon how did you setup F-curve to move particle in the heart shape? I searched for Effekseer F-curve tutorial but couldn't find one.

 

[ShadowHawkDragon]

@ravenhood first off check this list of commands provided by @JosephSeraph. You will need to alter the vertical and horizontal zooms to liking.

So to work in f-curves, first pick an axis (x,y or z), (you can leave all 3 selected but its a bit messy). Once that's done, double click the line to add a node/point, move this node to frame 0 and move it up or down to get the right starting position. Then add more nodes and move them around. If 'timeline mode' (bottom right) is set to 'percent' don't go past 100.

In addition, if you select a node you can then click the 'enlarge anchor' button in the top left of the window. This will give the motion a speed-up/slowdown. You can click and drag the ends of these new anchors to change the speed curve.

Now the tricky thing is that the final animation is a combination of the individual axis working together in tangent. This means for curved movement and/or shapes you have to work out how much to move it in each direction over a certain time period.

The heart for example is created by the y-axis moving up slowly speeding up to go down, then back up with a slight dip again at the end. Then on the x-axis it moves to one side slowing down before then gradually speeding up as it moves to the other side and finally back to start complete with more slow-down.


This is what it ends up looking like. Note how I've set the 'Sampling' on the right to 2, leave this at 10 and you won't get smooth movements (you won't believe how long this had me stumped).

Final tip keep the animation playing at all times whilst messing around with f-curves so you can see what you are doing.

Hope this helped, if I didn't explain a part properly just shout.

 

[ravenhood]

@ShadowHawkDragon thank you for the tips, can you share the effekseer file with me? I want to directly examine it

 

[ShadowHawkDragon]

@ravenhood Here it is, one beating heart as ordered.

Feel free to dissect, don't worry us shadow-hawks have spares

 

[ravenhood]

Yum, beating heart is always delicious as ever. Thanks @ShadowHawkDragon. Btw how did you make that inverse-x? Manually input opposite values?

 

[ShadowHawkDragon]

@ravenhood In scale I set x to -1, this basically flips the child nodes due to how inheritance works (including movement).

 

[Tea's Jams]

Chapter 5 in my tutorial series for Effekseer. each one is based off the tutorial documentation found on their website.

 

[AfroditeOhki]

I just wanna mention that I've succeeded in animating a character in DragonBones, exporting it to a png sequence, setting up a frame animation sheet for it and using that in ElfKisser. It looks pretty cool. If anyone wanted to learn DragonBones, this is an extra reason!



(Final version of this will be my entry for the contest, by the way)

 

[Tea's Jams]

Oh my, that's super cool! You should do a tutorial on it!

 

[Driftwood Gaming]

Triple liked it for extra effect! @AfroditeOhki

 

[AfroditeOhki]

Oh my, that's super cool! You should do a tutorial on it!

I might after the contest is over! Right now I'm just rushing to finish the thing in time

Thank you both!

Edit: my entry has been posted to the contest, if anyone wants to open it up and see what a Dragonbones animation looks like working in ElfKisser :3

 

[ravenhood]

@ShadowHawkDragon do you have any tip to make effect like this:
I want to make a sword sprite keep rotating in circle for 30 frames and then stop for the rest of time line. I tried to use F-curve however the only way i know to make it keep rotating in circle, is to set Z axis rotation value to increase by 360 per 10 frames like this: 360 - 720 - 1080.

Extra question, beside of F-curve, is there a way to change a Node's properties (scale/rotate) at a specified moment of time?

 

[Tea's Jams]

Chapter 6 of the Effekseer documentation tutorial section

 

[ShadowHawkDragon]

@ravenhood
Overall f-curves are the only way to actively control things like this. But you can cheat it by spawning a new node at the same time the first dies.

So for example you have a node which lives 10 frames and spawns 3 particle every 20 frames.
This node is set with Easing to scale from 1.0 to 3.0 by the time it dies.
We then make a child node which only spawns one particle, this has a delay of 10 frames, also lives 10 and has an Easing of 3.0 to 1.0 (make sure to turn off scale inheritance or it gets wonky).

Result: the first particle spawns and grows, as it dies its child spawns which shrinks and dies. This is when the first node immediately spawns its second particle and repeats the process. Basically you have a pulsating particle even without f-curves.


So onto your sword, you can set it to PVA rotation and have it spin on the desired axis constantly.
Then after it dies on frame 30 you have a new sword spawn. This second sword would be a child of the first and set to inherit the properties (position, rotation and scale) 'only on create'.

Do note that the sword will spin on its middle not its grip (unless that's what you want). If you want to change the 'anchor' basically create another node and make the first sword its child. Then move the sword to the desired position. Do note that the rotation we described above will now need to be controlled by the new 'anchor' node not the sword itself.

Here's a sample project I threw together showing these two example methods in action.

 

[ravenhood]

@ShadowHawkDragon oh that's very nice way to do it there wasn't even a blink when the transition happened.
I don't really understand why the pulse-in node and pulse-out node worked like that?
The pulse-in has Spawn Count = 1 however it spawn every time pulse-out spawned a particle? Does it always work like that? The child node will spaw whenever the parent node spawn a particle?