Animation Editor

[michael.zhang]

Hello,

 

Not really a showcase of my project, rather a tool I'm making for the project.

 

Almost done with all the essential editing features. Just wanted to share it cause I think it's lots of fun tweaking the animation graph in real-time! (Moreso than xml crawling :) )

 

Any feedback and useful feature ideas are welcome! :P

 

Planned features include:

0. view/create/edit animation events

1. More navigation options: ie: Goto Parent

2. Info Panel history (like Softimage's info navigation)

3. Reserving Branches of the animation tree for pasting

4. Temporary disabling of input function for editor specified constant

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65zENKOn3zk&hd=1

 

Btw, Unigine, is it okay if I make this video public on YouTube, since I want to link to it on my blog.

[pit]

It is cool!

 

I think unigine lacks for some useful tools such as your animation editor.

 

We are now developing "runtime script object environment" (I don't know how to name it) editor. The main idea is that you create small scripting object responding for particular behaviour aspect and than in editor assign values to it's internal variables. It gives two advantages. The first: you don't worry about links between objects (and you don't need to write any line of code to connect your objects!). The second: you can use the same scripts in different environments and achieve different results. Properly designed library of such scripts can save many time.

 

But we in contrast to you in early phase of development.

[rohit.gonsalves_]

It is cool!

 

I think unigine lacks for some useful tools such as your animation editor.

 

We are now developing "runtime script object environment" (I don't know how to name it) editor. The main idea is that you create small scripting object responding for particular behaviour aspect and than in editor assign values to it's internal variables. It gives two advantages. The first: you don't worry about links between objects (and you don't need to write any line of code to connect your objects!). The second: you can use the same scripts in different environments and achieve different results. Properly designed library of such scripts can save many time.

 

But we in contrast to you in early phase of development.

 

Cool! We will start doing such thing (command based designs) very soon.

[michael.zhang]

Here is a demo of the animation editor with some new features.

Here is a more or less complete feature list:

1. Play/Pause Animation
2. Load/Save Character
3. Display Combiner Hierarchy
4. Display Inputs in Hierarchy
5. Display Events in Hierarchy
6. Display Event Arguments in Hierarchy
7. Add/Remove Combiners
8. Add/Remove Inputs
9. Add/Remove Events
10. Add/Remove Arguments
11. Real-Time Editing
12. Editing Combiners, Inputs, and Events
13. Validates Callback or Input Functions
14. Robust Handling of Incomplete Hierarchies
15. Copy/Paste Combiner Branches
16. Toggle Display Inputs, Events, and Arguments
17. ... and other small features... I may have forgotten to mention :)
    

You may notice in the video that when reloading the copied combiner branch, alot of Null combiners are added. This is because we copied an incompletely specified Grid and Line combiners which are saved away using Null placeholders. This keeps the Unigine character animation system from crashing.

Also, the cancel icon that changes to a green check mark signifies that the specified callback or input function is valid. Which is useful to know if you typoed the script function name.

[michael.zhang]

By the way, if anyone is interested in using this tool, feel free to send me a PM.

[cory.sharplin]

Looks very interesting PM sent :)

[alexander.zubov]

sounds like a huge time saver, pm has been sent

[alexey.egorov]

wow. my animation system still alive.