I freaking Love it! Now, how about something cool
Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2019 10:45 pm
Ok, I HAVE TO SAY -- the more I use Creature the more I like it. Every time I load it up I learn something new. Previously I used Spriter as my "animation engine", and as a passionate user of Spriter, there are so many things I am going back and doing over with Creature. Having said that, let me ask anyone if they have any special techniques to perform a combined kind of animation!
What I want!
Imagine I have a that I have two animations of a character body. The first is it doing jumping jacks and the next is it in a standard idle animation where it just breathes and the head "bobs" up and down. Keeping that in mind, I want to put some big ole bushy eyebrows on his face. Moreover, I want to control the eyebrows in my game engine so I can make those bad boys move up and down by pressing and releasing the space bar.
What I used to do
Previously in Spriter, I created two Spriter objects - one that was the eyebrows and one that was the body animation. The eyebrows Spriter object has animations called "raise" and "lower" which would just slide the same sprite down into another position. As mentioned earlier, the Body object has two animations, one called "Jumping Jacks" and the other called "Idle". In my engine, I positioned the eyebrows on top of the head area for the Body object. This made everything look like it was one image. I was then able to control the eyebrows by pressing the space bar for raise and letting it go for lower. I could also hit "A" and the body would do jumping jacks and hit "D" and it would be idle (both of these are looped). Now whenever the character would do jumping jacks, I could make the eyebrows raise or lower by holding down the space bar. I could do the same when they are Idle. Its pretty cool and lets me composite characters from different parts like "eyes","mouth" etc. Spriter has character maps which let me change the eyebrows from "bushy" to "fleek" or different colors.
What can I do now!!
I have always assumed I would need to do the same thing in Creature. I was messing around with Skins, which would allow me to replace the sprite with the high brow version which could be agnostic of the specific animation. This seems more of the character maps I am used to. But there is just so much more in Creature! Is there a way that I can have one single Creature object and be able to control different parts individually? If not, then I can continue with the old school way--but if so please share!
Wermfood
What I want!
Imagine I have a that I have two animations of a character body. The first is it doing jumping jacks and the next is it in a standard idle animation where it just breathes and the head "bobs" up and down. Keeping that in mind, I want to put some big ole bushy eyebrows on his face. Moreover, I want to control the eyebrows in my game engine so I can make those bad boys move up and down by pressing and releasing the space bar.
What I used to do
Previously in Spriter, I created two Spriter objects - one that was the eyebrows and one that was the body animation. The eyebrows Spriter object has animations called "raise" and "lower" which would just slide the same sprite down into another position. As mentioned earlier, the Body object has two animations, one called "Jumping Jacks" and the other called "Idle". In my engine, I positioned the eyebrows on top of the head area for the Body object. This made everything look like it was one image. I was then able to control the eyebrows by pressing the space bar for raise and letting it go for lower. I could also hit "A" and the body would do jumping jacks and hit "D" and it would be idle (both of these are looped). Now whenever the character would do jumping jacks, I could make the eyebrows raise or lower by holding down the space bar. I could do the same when they are Idle. Its pretty cool and lets me composite characters from different parts like "eyes","mouth" etc. Spriter has character maps which let me change the eyebrows from "bushy" to "fleek" or different colors.
What can I do now!!
I have always assumed I would need to do the same thing in Creature. I was messing around with Skins, which would allow me to replace the sprite with the high brow version which could be agnostic of the specific animation. This seems more of the character maps I am used to. But there is just so much more in Creature! Is there a way that I can have one single Creature object and be able to control different parts individually? If not, then I can continue with the old school way--but if so please share!
Wermfood