[Request] A friggin' animation program!

[wildweasel]

Okay - those who have looked at my mods have probably noticed that I love - really, really, really love - using Offset animations on my weapons. For good reason, of course; these look really awesome when they're smooth enough, and Offset (and to a similar extent, Textures composites) makes these animations take up much less space in the mod, which reduces download size and memory requirements.

Problem is, Offsets and Textures are extremely motherfucking tedious to make. Which is why I - and a whole lot of other people, I'm sure - want to see a program that aims to help with this process. Please, somebody, make this thing!

Features it most certainly needs:

• Let me create an animation by specifying which sprite is displayed, and dragging out the sprite to where it needs to be.
• Let me add durations to the frames.
• Onion-skin support so I can see the difference between the current frame and the previous one in the sequence.
• A preview option so I can see it in motion without having to go through the agonizing process of launching, giving the weapon, and triggering the animation in question.
• The ability to add sounds to the animation, ideally letting them playback in the preview.
• Let me output said animation as Decorate code <-- THIS IS VITAL.

Stuff that would be awfully nice but not as high priority:

• Motion-tweening. Specifically, let me specify a start point, an end point, and how many tics between them.
• Flash/Director-style "path" support for motion tweening. Let me draw out a curved line to have the sprite travel along when it's tweening.
• A "speed-curve" option for motion tweening; automating those moves where it speeds up and then slows down along its path.
• Support to assemble multiple layers and export the whole mess as a Textures lump.

[Toberone]

Oh man this would be lovely. I currently just do the lazy approach of copy and pasting sprites cause goddamn doing it through decorate is a new level of tedium.

[The Zombie Killer]

Before my old HDD crashed, I was working on a program like this. It semi-worked, and would output Decorate offsets. I should probably revisit the project someday

[Blox]

The very least would be implementing Offset(x,y,ADDITIVE) which would make the offset call add its to the currently set offset.

[Snarboo]

This is why I never bothered with Decorate offsets: it's a huge headache to keep track of where the weapon sprite is without a visual indicator.

A program like this would be immensely useful, but for now, your best bet is to get Flash, then set the stage to 320x200. After setting up the animations, take note of the offsets, or export each frame individually. I wonder if a Flash or Photoshop plugin could be made to handle this sort of thing?

[xenoxols]

Why don't you just use textures? It has the visuals and you don't have to deal with the offset crap.

[wildweasel]

Why don't you just use textures? It has the visuals and you don't have to deal with the offset crap.

I do already, actually; however, Textures entries ultimately wind up taking up video RAM, as they ultimately have to become actual images in order to get displayed (if I'm remembering correctly) - plus this doesn't necessarily speed up things like motion-tweening, and definitely doesn't give me things like an animation preview or onionskin.

[jmickle]

coincidence, working on something...

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[The Zombie Killer]

Oooooh that looks really cool!

[Darsycho]

Holy hell that looks incredibly useful, must have.

[Amuscaria]

coincidence, working on something...

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[DoomNukem]

http://www.brashmonkey.com/spriter.html

[SuperSomariDX]

You could always try GraphicsGale

http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/

Should be basic enough.

[Blox]

hey guys

Offsets and Textures are extremely motherfucking tedious to make. Which is why I - and a whole lot of other people, I'm sure - want to see a program that aims to help with this process. Please, somebody, make this thing!

hi

continue thread

[Slax]

My suggestion would be to find an existing open source animation program (those exist, right) and whatever's missing via code.
Sounds easy enough in my noggin. If you know code, at least..