Object Animation

[Whilyam]

Just curious, is object animation (moving a model on a fixed path) working in the plugin? I know texture animation is, but could I do something simple like make an object (or a few objects) go around in a circle, etc? If so, is there a tutorial out there I could use?

Thanks in advance.

[Tsar Hoikas]

Simple Answer: No

Complicated Answer: There is a highly unrecommended and slightly stupid process of animating objects in python that I do not recommend that you do. I have little experience with it and will leave explanations to others.

[Lontahv]

Yeah... I wouldn't recommend it... Unless you happen to like the movement fly-mode gives you. The reason it jitters is because the "movement" is just a pile of warping--the python is saying(in a simplified state):

warp 1.0,1.0,1.0
wait
warp 1.1,1.1,1.1
wait
warp 1.2,1.2,1.2

If you REALLY want anims then you can do this--but what I do is never try to "polish" my age. It's best to be in a state of development until the feature you need comes out.

We're working on it.
If you want anims more than anything... bug Paradox (http://forum.guildofwriters.com/ucp.php?i=pm&mode=compose&action=quotepost&p=15316) .

~Lontahv

[andylegate]

Interesting.

While I agree that the method well, sucks, I've not observed any of this "jitter" at all. My door slides open smoothly, and it slides close smoothly. No stutter. No jitter. I'm using the same method that Trylon used on his gate in his funchk age.

But I do agree, this method is not how it should be done.

[Aloys]

I agree with Andy, for most 'small size' animations (avatar sized doors etc) it works decently.
On 'larger' animations it is more noticeable but nothing too horrible.
I really don't understand all the hate about this method of animation. I understand it's not the way it's supposed to be, and it's just a hack etc but really it gets the job done in most cases. And if I had the time to lear python, I'd animate tons of stuff myself.

[Lontahv]

Ok, one of the reasons I don't like those anims is because for people with slow-ish hardware they can be HORRIBLE(not that I know firsthand--but I've seen it a little when my comp has a lot of load on it's CPU).

The other reason is that sometimes people don't do it right; ie. they have it go as fast as the cpu can handle(most of your uru-cpu-time is then being taken up with that anim--witch makes it sticky while the anim plays).

Here's something you can try and see.

If you have a copy of the Jonae-Hood, try going to that underground(highvoltage-bunker) and opening one of the doors and walk around while it's opening. I'm thinking that it's just the tip of the iceberg for me because I have a 2.8GHz P4. A lot of computers now have 1.6-2.0GHz processors, and that's what fries like a vandigraph(don't think that's spelled right ) with these anims.

So, have fun with coding your anims while we "code you to a better place".


~Lontahv

[Grogyan]

Whilyam, sounds like you're trying to do something similar to what I wanted to do before, but with a camera circling the avatar on a fixed path.

I hope that that feature would be added when animations are here

[andylegate]

Hmmmmm.....

Well I didn't see anything like that, nor hear any reports with my big bouncing globe in Camp Bravo Night Time. Then of course I don't know how many low end machines people may have used. I do know that when I created and tested that Age, it was with my old computer. It had a 3.2 GHz CPU (Celeron D345 Prescott), 512 MB DDR RAM, and a old 256 MB Nvidia FX 5500 AGP video card.

Now I have a 1.8 GHz Dual Core CPU, with 1 GB of RAM and a Nvidia XFX 8500 ePCI graphics card, so Uru runs like lightning, even with other stuff running in the background (I actually had Uru still loaded up, with Blender, PlasmaShop and my Web browser going, when I loaded up and played Oblivion.....didn't notice a thing! Threw me for a loop as I exited Oblivion and still saw all that other stuff up and running. I tried Call of Duty 4 out of curriosity, it ran okay, until I got into a major battle, and then it started to stutter and jerk on me).

Right now my chief complaint is how difficult it is to make something animate like that. I'm still have problems just getting an object to rotate correctly. Your average Age Writer is going to back away from this method quickly, thinking, well I guess I'll just make my Age pretty to look at with lots of journals to read. Making puzzles with moving parts is just too hard.

[Whilyam]

No, I'm trying to move an object along a path. I'll wait until the plugin has a better mode of doing this.

[Aloys]

Ouch, I had no idea python-induced animation could be such a performance hit on lower CPUs.. However, as Andy mentions, so far I haven't seen much complaints. (hope it stays that way )

Your average Age Writer is going to back away from this method quickly, thinking, well I guess I'll just make my Age pretty to look at with lots of journals to read. Making puzzles with moving parts is just too hard.

As more and more functionnality is included in PyPRP it gets increasingly harder to know how to use everything. Even just right now to be able to use journals or linking books you need some basic knowledge of Python (or a good deal of patience).
So making Ages becomes more and more of a team effort if you want an Age that has both nice visuals, and functionnality, not to mention sound..
I know these days I wouldn't be able to deal with the more technical parts of Ahra Pahts without all the help I get..