Engine which attempts to emulate Sith engine titles.
Thing Animator is a special tool that lets you create new .KEY animation files live from the game world.
The primary benefit is its UI design borrows from paradigms common in modern video/animation environments.
The secondary benefit is you can create character animations in-game so it’s much easier to make animations interact with the world.
Select the Thing Animator tab, click the Choose Thing button, then right-click a thing in the main game window.
Now you are ready to begin editing an animation.
Just right-click on a mesh of your chosen thing’s model to select the corresponding animation track.
The mesh will have a wireframe rendered and any adjustments to the XYZ or PYR controls will apply to this track.
Note that locked tracks cannot be “picked” in this way.
Move the reference time forward/back in time.
Cycle between tracks.
Cycle between keyframes.
Deletes selected keyframes, if any are selected.
If none are selected, it will delete the keyframe under current reference time marker on the selected track.
Press SHIFT+DEL to delete all track keyframes under current reference time marker.
Comma will clone the previous keyframe of the selected track to the current reference time marker. Period will clone the next keyframe.
Hold SHIFT when pressing comma/period to clone for all tracks.
Click this button to activate the Choose Thing mode, then right-click a thing in the main game window. Clicking the button again will cancel the operation.
The Chosen Thing text will show what thing you selected.
Wipe out the animation workspace.
Load an existing animation workspace.
Save the current animation workspace.
Select an existing .KEY animation to import.
Save the current animation as a new .KEY animation file.
Clicking this will mirror the selected keyframes.
Clicking this will create a keyframe in all tracks at the current reference time.
Changes which flags a .KEY file is exported with, and changes the behavior of incrementing/decrementing the current reference time marker to either stop at the ends of the animation or loop back around.
Number of seconds the animation lasts. Note that reducing the duration below the timestamp of existing keyframes will prompt for the deletion of those keyframes.
Effectively the inverse of framerate, this controls the precision of keyframe placement and ultimately the final .KEY animation’s FPS.
This complex central UI component is the heart of the animation editor. Most of its elements should be pretty intuitive, though.
The yellow region represents the zoomed in workspace area in respect to the entire animation duration.
Drag the edges of the yellow region to adjust the workspace start/end, or drag the middle of the region to slide the workspace region.
The numbers at the left and right edges indicate the start and end timestamps of the current workspace.
The current reference time (RED LINE) can be scrubbed by dragging it within this area.
The left-hand side contains the labels of all the tracks.
Left-clicking on a track name will select it; the mesh will be rendered as a wireframe, and further manipulations will occur for this track.
Right-clicking on a track name will toggle its locked status; locked tracks are shown in red and are protected. Keyframes cannot be created, destroyed or manipulated for locked tracks.
This region is where all of the keyframes are.
You can click on a single keyframe to select it. Holding SHIFT and clicking will multi-select keyframes, whilst CTRL will toggle selection and ALT will remove selection.
You can drag a box around keyframes to multi-select. Holding SHIFT will add to existing selection, whilst CTRL will toggle and ALT will remove selection.
Dragging a keyframe will slide it (or all, if multi-selected) along the animation timeline.
Holding SHIFT while dragging keyframe(s) will clone them.
Using the mouse wheel will zoom in/out in the timeline.
Dragging with the right mouse button will pan the timeline left/right.
This section controls the orientation of the current track at the current reference time.
Translation of the mesh node. Hovering the mouse over the controls will preview the motion of adjusting the parameter. Clicking and dragging on the number up/down will adjust the value and create or modify an existing keyframe at the current time.
Rotation of the mesh node. Hovering the mouse over the controls will preview the motion of adjusting the parameter. Clicking and dragging on the number up/down will adjust the value and create or modify an existing keyframe at the current time.
Special .KEY marker ID. It doesn’t really matter if you want to set a marker in the Markers track or assign a marker to an animated track. When the .KEY is exported the markers will all be collected and exported appropriately.