Using more animation states

Feli

Hi,

I love working with Adventure Creator, it has served me veeeery well so far. Thing is, I am working on a game with traditional hand-drawn animation.

What I currently am looking for is a way to insert some kind of transition state between e.g. the walk and idle states. My walk cycle has another posture than the idle state has, so it looks much better with the transition animation in between.

I know this can be done within the animator controller, but still I think the AC engine does not directly support this kind of thing.

My second question would be how I could insert different idle animations that would only play from time to time. For example after being idle five seconds the character looks around, after another ten secons she rubs her nose, something like that. Is that kind of thing possible with a bit of coding or something?

Thanks in advance for any ideas!

ChrisIceBox

Are you using the Sprites Unity animation engine?  At the moment, it plays the various clips needed automatically - no room for "in-between animations", or actually configuring your motion controller.  Sounds like it'd be best if you were able to use the Mecanim engine for 2D as well.  Leave with me.

Guran

I'm struggling with the very same problem. I have an idle-to-walk animation that I'd like to use before the "looping" walk animation.

Feli

Thanks for the fast reply! Yes, I am using the Sprites Unity animation engine.
Yes, I guess that was what I meant – being able to directly configure the motion controller for sprite animation. If this feature could be implemented in a future release I'd be quite happy!
Thanks for listening Chris!

ChrisIceBox

Sure - just got to think of the best way to go about it.  Sprites Unity already makes use of Mecanim, but this would be a kind of "Sprites Unity Manual/Pro" way of doing things.  I'll probably make a new animation engine for it, but I've got to be careful it doesn't come off as too confusing.

Feli

That sounds great! Of course I understand that you don't want the interface to get too complex – in fact that you always seem to be keeping simplicity and usability in mind is part of what makes AC so good. Still, if it really was possible to make this Mecanim-interface optional so the unassuming user won't be bothered by it too much I am sure it will be a very valuable addition to the animation process in AC.
Again, thanks a lot for keeping up with our suggestions like this.

ChrisIceBox

OK, this is in for 1.29 under a new animation engine called Unity Sprites Complex.

It's very similar to the current Mecanim solution, in that it spits out parameter values for a "move speed float" etc, but also a "direction integer".  The value indicates the character's facing direction: 0=down, 1=left, etc.  I found that it'll quickly make your FSMs very complex, but it does provide complete control over transitioning between any/all animations.  You may even be able to imitate Broken Sword-level character movement, but I don't dare think of the complexity involved. 

Feli

Chris, this sounds fantastic! Haven't gotten round to download the update yet, but I can't wait to try it out.
Just saw your message - it took me a while to realize that you are talking about the update which actually is already out. This happened so fast, I am nothing but amazed!
Thank you so much in advance, I really am SO looking forward to working with this )

smokeincaves

Hi, I'm wondering about this same thing too. When my character goes into idle he should take his hands out of his pockets and then just stand there. Is there now a way to control sections of the Idle animation? Or should I just create a really long Idle animation loop?