ChunkAnimate

ChunkyAnimate is a plugin to the Minecraft path-tracer Chunky which provides tools and modifications to aid in both the creation and the rendering of animations. The plugin removes the need to completely reload Chunky on every frame. The Keyframe Editor can be used to created keyframes to then be animated and rendered or you can load json files generated by external tools such as ChunkyAnimationAutomation.

Download

• Releases

• 0.1.0: Semi-stable version for Chunky 2.4.0.
• 0.1.2 branch: Development version for Chunky 2.4.0.
• master branch: Development version for Chunky 2.5.0.

Installation

Download the plugin. In the Chunky Launcher, expand Advanced Settings and click on Manage plugins. In the Plugin Manager window click on Add and select the .jar file in the extracted zip file. Click on Save and start Chunky as usual.

Usage

Upon opening Chunky, there will be two new tabs called Animation Controls and Keyframe Editor.

To Keyframe an animation natively within Chunky using the Keyframe Editor tab:

1. Edit (Keyframe)Name: "Keyframe" to something like "Keyframe1"
2. Edit (Keyframe)Time under (Keyframe)Name
3. Press Add Keyframe
4. Select Keyframe and then move camera and edit scene properties as desired and then press From Scene on all values to be animated
5. Repeat Steps 1-4 to add all Keyframes
6. Use Play Preview to preview animation or drag the Time slider.
7. To apply edits to a Keyframe; select the keyframe and then use From Scene to apply changes.

Note 1 - Use Save Keyframes and Load keyframes to resume progress.

Note 2 - Using From Scene and then Add Keyframe creates blank frames.

To render an animation in the Animation Controls tab:

1a. If using the Keyframe Editor make sure to load the keyframes first if none are present.

1b. If using externally generated json files click on Load Frames From Folder.

2. Press From Keyframes

3. Choose the Framerate.

4. Click Start animation to start automatically rendering the animation frames. Click Stop Animation to stop animating. The render reset button will NOT stop animating.

The resulting animation frames will be saved next to the initial scene under the animate folder.

To convert the frames into a video you may use something like ffmpeg. Below is an example command you could use

ffmpeg -r 30 -f image2 -s 1920x1080 -i frame%05d.png -vcodec libx264 -crf 25  -pix_fmt yuv420p test.mp4

-i is the file name with %05d defining the suffix. (ie frame00002, frame00003, etc.)
-r is the framerate (fps)
-crf is the quality, lower means better quality, 15-25 is usually good
-s is the resolution
-pix_fmt yuv420p specifies the pixel format, change this as needed