playMaker

Author Topic: Variable animating with Get/Set property flexibility  (Read 4824 times)

Lane

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2511
  • Mender of the past
    • Cleverous
Variable animating with Get/Set property flexibility
« on: May 01, 2013, 09:17:13 PM »
This may already be possible and I don't understand how to accomplish it yet.

I've become more familiar with Get and Set Property after realizing how damn awesome they are and I've at the same time needed to start animating variables quite a bit... So say I want to animate an objects scale(float) between current and target, how can I do that?

My suggestion is to add more flexibility to the current actions or add advanced actions of standard ones like typical set actions. I would totally pay for a new set of actions or an expansion set that would automatically save the target(float/int/etc) current variable and let you define a new destination value for it with a simple animation graph of time to (destination)value levels.

In general i think what I'm looking for is less actions that do more generic things and have greater flexibility, which may make them bigger and more complex/expensive but will absolutely save the development or experimentation time of doing large sets of smaller actions repeatedly. Could there be an action that instead of Set Gravity its just Set (input)? The user can choose from a catalog of options that the action is capable of manipulating.

This is also brought up because there are a hellacious amount of actions and I know that many of them are necessarily separate, and thats great, but I think there is room for an advanced set that works more along the lines of Get/Set Property because its so, damn, useful.
Products by Cleverous
|| Vault Core : Database
|| Vault Inventory : Multiplayer Inventory
|| Vault Attributes : Character Stats
|| That Hurt! : Dmg Floaties
|| Quinn : 3D

jeanfabre

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15500
  • Official Playmaker Support
Re: Variable animating with Get/Set property flexibility
« Reply #1 on: May 02, 2013, 01:46:45 PM »
Hi,

 could you give a concrete example? I am not sure I follow where the benefit is to add another level of indirection on property setters and getters.

do you mean that you would like to maintain a map of properties with custom names and then set that custom names? like:

"my bg color" -> camera fog color
"my position" -> player transform position
"my value" -> player score system score function

and then you would have an action to let you do this:

 Set "my bg color" to rgb(0,0,0)

Is it what you are thinking of?

bye,

 Jean

Lane

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2511
  • Mender of the past
    • Cleverous
Re: Variable animating with Get/Set property flexibility
« Reply #2 on: May 02, 2013, 02:22:07 PM »
So say I want to animate an objects scale(float) between current and target, how can I do that?

More specifically, using one action:

1)Right click the float you want to change in the inspector
2)Link it to this new action in the editor
3)At runtime it stores the current value of that float
4)You set whether you want to add/divide/subtract/multiply by a value/variable or set it explicitly.
5)Also with the option to animate it with a graph that has Time and Value.
6)Have an option to return it to the default value.

Kind of a generic tween action that can link to any float by either a right click link to sort of thing or a drag n drop and gives the option to use a graph for animation over time.

I'm making some 3d gui stuff with ragespline and the states are just getting really cluttered with so many actions to animate the holographic parts floating around, spinning and moving and I'm not even doing much ease animation yet so I'm starting to find a need to condense the actions.

What would be even better is to have an action that just stores the transformation that you did in the scene view, so you toggle it (like the lock button) and move/rotate/scale the object in the scene view and it stores all that data in the action as a "do", then you just specify the curve type and time to do it. If you've done any animation in 3ds max this is second nature, super fast and works very consistently, you just enable animation mode, manipulate your object over n frames and watch it do it. The difference would just be that in PM you run an action.
Products by Cleverous
|| Vault Core : Database
|| Vault Inventory : Multiplayer Inventory
|| Vault Attributes : Character Stats
|| That Hurt! : Dmg Floaties
|| Quinn : 3D

jeanfabre

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15500
  • Official Playmaker Support
Re: Variable animating with Get/Set property flexibility
« Reply #3 on: May 02, 2013, 02:41:57 PM »
Hi,

 I see what you mean now. I also wish Unity had inspired itself with 3ds max sometimes... some of the stuff they do in 3ds are pur genius in terms of workflow!

Ezgui has something like that when you set panel transitions, do you have it?

 bye,

 Jean

Lane

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2511
  • Mender of the past
    • Cleverous
Re: Variable animating with Get/Set property flexibility
« Reply #4 on: May 02, 2013, 02:52:23 PM »
I haven't looked at ez GUI, what does it offer along these lines?
Products by Cleverous
|| Vault Core : Database
|| Vault Inventory : Multiplayer Inventory
|| Vault Attributes : Character Stats
|| That Hurt! : Dmg Floaties
|| Quinn : 3D

jeanfabre

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15500
  • Official Playmaker Support
Re: Variable animating with Get/Set property flexibility
« Reply #5 on: May 02, 2013, 03:02:41 PM »
Hi,

 Nothing, it just implemented a mode where you can move objects while in editor, record its transform as a transition target, and then define how to get there using tweens.

bye,

 Jean