Difference between revisions of "HowTo:Make Animated Textures"
(new article with all the information I know about animations.) |
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<Mesh scale="1.0" ... blend="ONE ONE" animation="whitelight.ani"> | <Mesh scale="1.0" ... blend="ONE ONE" animation="whitelight.ani"> | ||
would create a blinking white light. | would create a blinking white light. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Newer versions of Mesher with support for MTL files will interperet a map_Kd property pointing to an .ani as an animated texture, and will properly add them to the xmesh/bfxm as an animation as shown above. | ||
Animations are fairly simple. Each animation is made up of a folder containing several individual pictures. It also contains an .ani file that tells the game what frames to display and in what order. Here is an example of an .ani file: | Animations are fairly simple. Each animation is made up of a folder containing several individual pictures. It also contains an .ani file that tells the game what frames to display and in what order. Here is an example of an .ani file: | ||
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blink0003.png | blink0003.png | ||
blink0004.png | blink0004.png | ||
| − | + | The first row of numbers are for the (deprecated?) animated sprite system, and can be safely ignored, but must be present. | |
| + | |||
| + | The second row of numbers indicates the number of frames in the animation and the duration of each frame (in seconds?) respectively. | ||
| + | |||
| + | In SVN, startRandom can also be added at the end of the second row to pick a random starting frame. | ||
After the numbers, there is a list of frames to be used in the animation. You may reference each frame as many times as you like. For instance: | After the numbers, there is a list of frames to be used in the animation. You may reference each frame as many times as you like. For instance: | ||
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The standard running light animations are redlight.ani, bluelight.ani, greenlight.ani, and whitelight.ani. Other special light animations exist, such as blink.ani for the Llama and streak.ani for the Ariston. | The standard running light animations are redlight.ani, bluelight.ani, greenlight.ani, and whitelight.ani. Other special light animations exist, such as blink.ani for the Llama and streak.ani for the Ariston. | ||
| − | You can find all the | + | You can find all the shared animations used by the game in the "animations" folder. |
| + | |||
| + | Ships with custom animated textures may store their animation frames and .ani file in the ship's directory in /units. | ||
Revision as of 15:27, 14 August 2007
 Tips for realistic-looking textures
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 HowTos
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Editing BFXM files (format spec) 
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Using animated textures on a model is similar to using regular textures. Instead of (or in addition to) setting the texture element in the xmesh, you must set the animation element as well. For example:
<Mesh scale="1.0" ... blend="ONE ONE" animation="whitelight.ani">
would create a blinking white light.
Newer versions of Mesher with support for MTL files will interperet a map_Kd property pointing to an .ani as an animated texture, and will properly add them to the xmesh/bfxm as an animation as shown above.
Animations are fairly simple. Each animation is made up of a folder containing several individual pictures. It also contains an .ani file that tells the game what frames to display and in what order. Here is an example of an .ani file:
-10 10 40 .035 blink0000.png blink0001.png blink0002.png blink0003.png blink0004.png
The first row of numbers are for the (deprecated?) animated sprite system, and can be safely ignored, but must be present.
The second row of numbers indicates the number of frames in the animation and the duration of each frame (in seconds?) respectively.
In SVN, startRandom can also be added at the end of the second row to pick a random starting frame.
After the numbers, there is a list of frames to be used in the animation. You may reference each frame as many times as you like. For instance:
blink0009.png blink0010.png blink0010.png blink0010.png blink0010.png
will display frame nine briefly, and frame ten for a longer period. This is especially useful for blinking animations, where you want to display the black frame for a long period of time to control the interval between blinks.
The standard running light animations are redlight.ani, bluelight.ani, greenlight.ani, and whitelight.ani. Other special light animations exist, such as blink.ani for the Llama and streak.ani for the Ariston.
You can find all the shared animations used by the game in the "animations" folder.
Ships with custom animated textures may store their animation frames and .ani file in the ship's directory in /units.
