Would it be possible to get an official Team Radiant video on creating new animations?

Modding
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Hiya folks, I’ve been eager to create new animations for SH - but finding documentation to help has been… hard.

There are a few threads from 2013 by someone named VoxelPirate which are helpful, but a more up to date example would be fantastic. There are so few mods that actually have custom animations, so I doubt that I’m the only person struggling to grasp the idea.

I’ve gotten as far as exporting the original SH models from Qubicle as .obj files, then importing them into blender, importing the skeleton, and then attempting animations. Some of the issues I still have with it are finding the new animations, referencing the new animations in the JSON files and adding particle effects to an animation. Even being able to import the existing animations in order to tweak them slightly would be great, but I have absolutely no idea how to go about doing that.

If anyone fancies making an in-depth tutorial I’m sure that plenty of us here on the forums would really appreciate it, as sharing that knowledge could make way for some really interesting mods!

Cheers,
Minisynn.

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Adding @malley, in case you have specific questions. He could also maybe do one of his streams as a tutorial. @Hyrule_Symbol 's also gotten really far with adding custom animations to the game.

Glad you’re interested and thanks for reaching out! :smiley:

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If you want to use Blender, the tutorial will need to be made by someone from the community, as the team has only used 3ds Max and Maya. So @Hyrule_Symbol can help you get started :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the replies guys! I have no preference in 3D modelling software, I just assumed you guys used Blender as that’s what VoxelPirate had been using in his posts from a few years ago.

And yikes, Hyrule_Symbol has some crazy well done animations, those are gorgeous.

Do you know if Hyrule has done any tutorials or anything? Failing to find any in their post history.

And if @malley is able to answer specific questions, my (probably silly) main question is where exactly is the animation folder file path? Animations for, for example, an archers primary fire seem to be referenced in “stonehearth:combat:ranged_attacks” as an effect titled “archer_1h_shoot”, and I’m really struggling to actually find where exactly that is.
Thanks again folks.

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stonehearth/data/rigs/…

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I have literally been in and out of that folder 100 times, and still managed to completely miss the “animations” folder… thank you, I’m going to go sit in a corner and think about what I’ve done now

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:joy: It happens, probably too often xD

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It happens to me all the time :smiley:

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Honestly I’d love to see a tutorial for blender and maya etc for animations.

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Thanks @sdee and @Relyss for leading me here!

I always had ‘Make animation tutorial’ in my To-Do list, i just keep banging my head at the table saying "Get to it already!"
So basically, i just, i’m lazy, i think

I can help you get started with Blender, which is my program of choice mostly because it’s free, i did have some posts where i help other members get animating, but those’ll probably take a while to find

Just message me via PM or just let me know if you want the conversation stay here

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I’ve managed to get to grasps with animating! Gah, this is amazing. I actually sat through all of VoxelPirates videos this time and yeah they really are sufficient, I didn’t give the guy enough credit and didn’t pay enough attention before. Curse you ADHD.

Alright, this is a big ask but - does anyone know whether or not it’s possible to add particle effects to an attack animation? I have no idea how to create particle effects to begin with, but I’m sure I can find something online - I just don’t want to learn how to do it if I can’t apply it!

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Yes, right at the effect file for the specific animation. For example, for my (soon to come) crab, I have this idle effect where he just “clicks” his claws.

{
   "type" : "effect",
   "tracks": {
      "animation": {
            "type": "animation_effect",
            "start_time": 0,
            "animation": "pinch.json",
            "loop": true
      }
   }
}

For adding particles (which is a nice idea and I will take a look to add into the crab animations), you would add that inside the “tracks”, after the “animation”, something like:

{
   "type" : "effect",
   "tracks": {
      "animation": {
            "type": "animation_effect",
            "start_time": 0,
            "animation": "pinch.json",
            "loop": true
      },
      "bite1": {
         "type": "cubemitter",
         "start_time": 333,
         "end_time": 343,
         "loop": false,
         "cubemitter": "particles/sparks/clamp_trap_spark.cubemitter.json",
         "transforms": { "x": 0, "y": 2.2, "z": 0,
            "rx": 90,
            "ry": 90,
            "rz": 0
         }
      }
   }
}

Where “cubemitter” is the file path to your particle animation.

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That’s fantastic Bruno, thanks again for your help!

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Thanks @BrunoSupremo for answering so many questions : ). I’m sorry I wasn’t on here sooner - I had some stuff to deal with at home and then had a vacation : /.

So, as far as helping @Minisynn figure out animating in Blender, I’m sorry to say that I would be of no help to you : /. I have tried to use Blender in the past, but couldn’t work my way into the movement controls - and didn’t have the drive to keep poking at it. So I literally know nothing about that program : (. BUT!

For “How to animate in Maya” - I basically already did a tutorial on my first stream, which you can find here:

The only problem is, I am using a series of scripts which I wrote to speed up my process, and I haven’t yet gotten clearance to send that out to the public (and may not ever : /, I gotta ask around, hit up the legal department and what not). But I do go through ‘How I animate in Maya’ and if you ignore the tools, it is a good example of how I animate in any program. Honestly though, there are much better people than myself out there who both animate and teach animation better than I do, should be able to find many with a google/youtube search.

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