Animation Names

[Whilyam]

I'm unclear on how animation names work. I know they're named after the object they belong to or some such, but what if I have a number of animations? Should I name my IPO curves? For example, say I have an elevator I want to go up when I press one button and down when I press another. How do I store "elevatordown" and "elevatorup"?

[Grogyan]

I am going by the assumption that each animation will have their own set of IPO curves and are named differently to reflect that.

If however you have multiple animations using the same set of IPO curves, then you'll probably need to use delta IPO curves, which are not implemented yet in PyPrp (which is I personally want for my wizard)

[D'Lanor]

If an object has multiple animations you distinguish them by their timing. The framerate is fixed to 30 fps. So for a 10 seconds animation you would use frame 1 to 300 and set the start and end values in the alcscript like this.

Code: Select all

<object>:
    animations:
      - name: <animation 1>
        autostart: 0
        loop: 0
        loopstart: 0
        loopend: 10
      - name: <animation 2>
        autostart: 0
        loop: 0
        loopstart: 10
        loopend: 15


Animation 2 in this example uses frame 301 to 450 which means it lasts 5 seconds. So you set the start and end values to 10 and 15 respectively, etc.

btw, I think the word "loop" in that property is misleading since it applies both to looped and single animations.

For an elevator that follows the same path up and down you can use the same animation backwards. Edit: I have added the backwards command to the wiki.

[Grogyan]

What I am saying though is that you will not be able to use the same IPOs for other objects with PyPrp as it is as the IPO's relate to locations relative to the world, therefore you'd need a seperate set of IPOs for each object.

Unless you parent them, and that just makes things ugly IMO

[Whilyam]

I'm just talking about where do I name them. Is it in the IPO editor? I'd assume so, but I have issues with assumptions

[D'Lanor]

The answer then is: nowhere. The name is only relevant for the AlcScript. And as I explained AlcScript uses the time in seconds to distinguish animations.

[Grogyan]

I'm just talking about where do I name them. Is it in the IPO editor? I'd assume so, but I have issues with assumptions

Yes, that is where you can name or rename IPO's, and that name will be referenced by the ALCScript

[Lontahv]

Parenting stuff with anims ROCKS. It cuts down on Plasma having to read more than one anim and you having to have a multi-responder with all the little animated bits.

What's messy about it?

[Paradox]

I'm just talking about where do I name them. Is it in the IPO editor? I'd assume so, but I have issues with assumptions

Yes, that is where you can name or rename IPO's, and that name will be referenced by the ALCScript

Naming the IPO doesn't matter at all. That name is never used.

As well, you can have multiple objects sharing the same IPO. I have three rotating fans that all use the same IPO.

[Grogyan]

I'm just talking about where do I name them. Is it in the IPO editor? I'd assume so, but I have issues with assumptions

Yes, that is where you can name or rename IPO's, and that name will be referenced by the ALCScript

Naming the IPO doesn't matter at all. That name is never used.

My bad, but if AlcScript doesn't reference them by name, then it does so by object, even though the IPO name is requested in AlcScript

As well, you can have multiple objects sharing the same IPO. I have three rotating fans that all use the same IPO.

Parented only?

Reason I ask is with my experiments with my little wizard have shown that if you parent, and also have an IPO on the child, it gives weird results.
If all three fans have the same IPO and not parented, then they will occupy the same world space

It gets ugly when you want to parent but not want the object to animate relative to world space
Hence I am waiting for delta IPO curve support in PyPrp

It'll also make using my wizard more understandable