Rigid Animation How To

How to Rigid Animation

This document explanins about RigidAnimation in fastbird-engine. In this document, Rigid Animation means each objects participating the animation are not deformed but only transformed. This types of animation is good for door animations, weapon-ready or weapon-recoil animations.

Preparing animation data

fastbird-engine can import collada file(.dae) with animation data. You can create a .dae file with animations in Blender. Insert key-frames and set transformations and just export it as the collada format(file-export-collada). Then the data is ready. How to insert keyframes and transformation is not the scope of this document but you may easily find other useful resources. fastbird-engine is not tested with .dae files exported by other 3D authoring tools then Blender.

If you have serveral actions, you need to merge it into one track since only one track is exported. Then you can write .actions file to tell fastbird-engine about the actions information.

daefilename.actions

<Actions>
	<Action name="Idle" start="0" end="1"/>
	<Action name="Ready" start="1" end="91"/>
</Actions>

Now you can use IEngine::GetMeshObject() or IEngine::GetMeshGroup() function as the same when you import the normal, not animated, collada meshes. If the importer finds the animation data in the collada file, it will create a AnimationData(Code/Engine/AnimationAnimationData.h) instance and serveral Animation(Code/Engine/Animation/Animation.h) instances per one IMeshObject(or IMeshGroup). Application programmers can use Animation instance to animate the object. To animate the object, call the following function

Animation::PlayAction(const std::string& name, bool immediate, bool reverse)

name is what you wrote in the .actions file. If immediate is true, then the previous animation is canceled and the new animation is played immediately. If reverse is true, the animation is played reversely. So you can create only one animtion for weapon-ready animation and you play it reversely when weapon is going to idle state.

Simple mining animation using this system: http://youtu.be/Zq6gnesBndM