Animation editor in AGS 4.0

[Mehrdad]

Hi developers
I'm an animator and I really need to this structure in engine. This feature is ready in Visionaire and other game engines

1) change Anchor point to adjust to previous animations.


2) More than one frame to start animation in View editor. For example, start of 0 and return to loop to frame 4.
3) More than one frame in stop animation in view editor. For example, standing of character with a little animation.
4) custom "turn before walking" . For example Left to right --> play loop number and frame number
   I have a module that was written by @Gurok for this with some a little bug. if you want.

Thanks in advance

[Crimson Wizard]

This task is best separated into parts:
1. Data, how the necessary animation sections and other properties are organized within existing items (views, loops etc).
2. Engine behavior, how the engine runs these animations.
3. Editor interface.


For example, there may be two options for making start/stop animations.

One is to define a entry and exit sections within a loop, where middle section will be treated as looping.
This, however, may be inconsistent if used with Animate command, because animation may be stopped instantly by a script command, and it won't be proper to play an ending sequence after it ordered to stop. So while entry segment might work with Animate command, the exit segment won't.
OTOH, I suppose that having entry segment in the loop may be useful for regular Animate command too. Alternatively, we might introduce new parameter to Animate that tells which part to play: entry, middle or exit.

Another option is to have a new dedicated loop for each enter/exist segment. The downside would be too many loops to set, as you need that for each walking direction, so for a single walking dir you'll have 3 loops, for 4 directions - 12 loops, and 24 loops in case of 8 directions. Or maybe that's not a big deal. I'm not an animator, so cannot tell.

The upside of this second approach is perhaps that it's more consistent with idea of "animation transition".
If we also have transitions between walk directions (for turning), these would be dedicated loops, and then the whole system is represented by loops with assigned roles (rather than parts of loops).


EDIT:
I remember that in sound design the starting/ending parts of the track are called "Roll In" and "Roll Out". Do you use similar terms in animation?


EDIT 2:
Speaking of workarounds, AGS 4 script has a new Pathfinder and MotionPath commands that let you calculate the walking path and use it for scripting custom walking.