I just don't understand animation UI at all

[pawsplay]

Okay, I can build an animation. If I start from scratch, I can usually sequence the events, guesstimate how long to make everything, and create a simple new animation. Where I get into trouble is altering existing ones or trying to combine stuff.

For instance, I wanted to create a Four Elements Attack, and I thought I would start by chaining together earth, fire, water, and wind animations. All I succeeded in doing was mucking up. Can anyone post a tutorial on how to actually use the UI  for creating animations like a person, and not like a trained donkey?

 

[Matseb2611]

To make a four elements attack, you might need to combine two or more animation sheets together into a new one. Because you know when you pick animation graphics to be used, you can only pick 2. 

As for actual animation building, it usually comes with practice, but some general things to consider:

- making an effect last for more frames makes it smoother

- to give the animation more oomph, use the flash target and flash screen effects during the key moments (like when the impact lands for example)

- use the zoom in feature as well, for example if you want an explosion to start out really small and end up huge, or something to that effect

- keep in mind the animation's position (center, head, feet, screen). Center, head, and feet will play at each target separately (if the skill goes for more than 1 enemy), whereas Screen option will simply play the animation once and in the middle of the screen regardless of how many targets the skill hits.  

 

[pawsplay]

How does copy frames work?

 

[Shaz]

You set up a few frames the way you want them, then you tell it to copy a group of frames, and where you want to copy it to. So if your animation is 32 frames in all, but made up of 2 groups of 16 frames that repeat, you'd set up frames 1-16, then you'd to go Copy Frames, select frames 1-16 in the first selection, and 17 in the second. You're saying you want to copy frames 1-16 and paste them into frame 17 onwards.


Just create some mucking around animations and play with the options, to see what they do.


Also, have you looked at the help file on this? It explains each of those options.

 

[pawsplay]

I know what the Help file says, I've just struggled with what it means. So... is there an easy way to copy frames from one animation to another? 

 

[Shaz]

No. If I want to base one animation on another, I'll copy the original animation to a new slot, then adjust.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

and as Matseb2611 said, if you want to do a four element attack, you'll need to create the sheets first since there aren't any sheets that has two or more elements and you can only use 2 sheets per animation in the animation tab so you need to either combine the animations into a single sheet, or at least 2 element animation per sheet...

you can't just go to one animation, copy a frame then paste it into another animation...

 

[Tsukihime]

I know what the Help file says, I've just struggled with what it means. So... is there an easy way to copy frames from one animation to another?

No, because the images in one animation depend on the specific graphic, and if you copy frames from one animation to another, then it's a different picture.


Whatever their design was, they likely did it for performance and reducing filesize rather than storing separate images for each frame which would then be possible to just copy back and forth because all of the information is contained within a single frame.

 

[kerbonklin]

I'd say it took me about 30 minutes of staring at the Animations tab to figure out how 90% of it works. Then from there I made myself some custom animations using RTP mixes, zooms, hues, etc.  I honestly think it's pretty self-explanatory after looking through some of the RTP animations. I'm not sure why many people get troubled with these, (No offense of course)

I still think it's a shame that it can only hold up to two graphic sheets. I wonder if anyone made scripts to add more, though it would probably be complicated to modify it code-wise.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

^ that would probably require something that hacks thru the editor... or simply script based animating...

what I do normally was to combine the animations that I would normally need combined (like the elements) in one sheet... though it has some kind of limit to how much lines you can have per sheet... (I think around 21 lines of animation)

 

[Tsukihime]

I still think it's a shame that it can only hold up to two graphic sheets. I wonder if anyone made scripts to add more, though it would probably be complicated to modify it code-wise.

The animation system is easy to change once you understand it, but the problem is having users create the animations.


For example, I wrote a script that treats the full animation sheet as a single image

But how exactly do you plan to do that in the editor? My solution was: just do whatever you can and playtest it in an actual game.


It's a pretty terrible solution but then again the animation editor is pretty restrictive.


If you want more than two graphics, AND you still want to use RM's animation editor, then one solution is to just run multiple animations together concurrently, but you don't have the option of testing the whole thing in the animation editor.

 

[pawsplay]

I'd say it took me about 30 minutes of staring at the Animations tab to figure out how 90% of it works. Then from there I made myself some custom animations using RTP mixes, zooms, hues, etc.  I honestly think it's pretty self-explanatory after looking through some of the RTP animations. I'm not sure why many people get troubled with these, (No offense of course)

I still think it's a shame that it can only hold up to two graphic sheets. I wonder if anyone made scripts to add more, though it would probably be complicated to modify it code-wise.

That's basically what I did. Like I said, I've been able to splice together some of my own simple custom animations. In this case, it turns out I was looking for functionality that isn't there. Thank you all for helping me better understand how the animation system works. So, I can clone one animation, but to add more frames from another animation I have to add them manually, and I can't have more than two sheets. 

 

[Matseb2611]

Yeah, copying one animation into an empty slot and then editing the copied version from there is a very useful way of saving yourself time. Like say if I want to make an animation that looks a lot like the first one but has something extra added to it or perhaps even uses a different colour hue (e.g. instead of red it's now green), then I'd definitely use this method. 

 

[Celianna]

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