Supported Entities

Supported Entities

This page tabulates all entities that may be supported for animation with Stop Motion Helper Beta. To start, animation support has three levels of classification:

• Complete support (CS): Keyframing, animation playback, and GMod save packing
• Partial support (PS): Keyframing and animation playback
• No support (NS): Possible keyframing, but no evidence of animation

A single entity can only have at most 1 support category, but a group of entities can have a range. On the other hand, entities themselves have two classifications:

• Map-created (MC): Spawned by the map.
• Player-created (PC): Spawned by the player, or by indirect means due to the player

The following table summarizes the relationship of map-created and player-created entities and their animation support

Entity Class	Animation Support Range	Reason
MC	NS - PS	No support for packing
PC	PS - CS	Animation always supported for (scripted) entities

Player-created entities in general have complete or partial support. Map-created entities in general have partial or no support; they never have complete support because in the packing system, map entities are ignored during a GMod save. Hence, map entities lose their packing data, and the animator must manually load the animation.

Because entities come in two classes, we may include them in the table for completeness.

Table of Entities

Entity	Entity Type	Animation Support	Reason
Ragdolls	PC	CS	Modifiers for animation, can be packed
Map ragdolls	MC	PS	Can't be packed
Physics props	PC	CS	Modifiers for animation, can be packed
Map physics props	MC	PS	Can't be packed
Effect props	PC	CS	Both the root and its attached entity model can be animated via Nonphysical Bone Modifier. Can be packed.
NPCs	PC	CS	Faces and their (nonphysical) bones can be animated. Can be packed. Some NPCs with physics bones (e.g. Animated Props) can be moved around. Take caution when animating these because they can disappear if they did, losing animation data. Use their ragdoll representation instead
Weapons	PC	CS?	Same reason as physics props. Can be packed? Take caution when animating these because they can disappear if a player picks them up or if they disappear on their own, losing animation data. Use their physics prop representation instead.
Map NPCs	MC	PS	Same reasons as NPCs. Can't be packed
Map Weapons	MC	PS	Same reasons as Weapons. Can't be packed
func_brush	MC	NS - PS	Can't be packed. Some entities do not respond to movement but can contain keyframes.
func_tracktrain	MC	NS - PS	Same reasons as func_brush.
func_door	MC	NS - PS	Same rasons as func_brush.
Scripted Entities	PC	PS - CS	Some entities aren't meant to be duplicated -> may not be packed.
Map Scripted Entities	MC	PS	Same reasons as Scripted Entities. Can't be packed