I was just experimenting with skeleton keyframing animation system (well, trying to create a very simple one), for studying purposes (you may have a great idea about some algorithm, but usually only practical implementation would help you to find all the flaws), because I never programmed such system.
However, since I'm currently without a graphics designer, I used image of Peanut, since I like this character a lot (probably as many people here). I hope Rick wouldn't get angry because of that, I'm not publishing it anywhere (except for here) and it's just programming experiment of my own (type, that usually doesn't see light of the world in it's original form).
I thought that you might find it interesting and perhaps a little entertaining to create simple peanut animations. Animation system is very primitive, created in about three-four days, similar to Pivot Stickfigure Animator, but with support for keyframing (you set start and end position and application calculates all frames between).
Program is also more "programmer-friendly" than "user-friendly", so don't expect nice user interface or many "anti-stupid-user protections", so there's high probability that it starts behaving weirdly, for example when you select different keyframe/load different file while playing animation. Most of them can be repaired by a few lines of code, but I was just lazy doing that, focusing only on animation system itself
But if you find it interesting, I may redesign it's interface and even add more functions.As I already mentioned, application can load and save animations, in very simple binary format (2 bytes for each element, 14 bits are used in each 2 bytes, 2 bits are ignored, total 36 bytes are used for one keyframe), so you can even post your animations here, since files are very small. Simple format also means there's no protection against errors, no file format flag (thus you can load any file you have in computer, resulting in weird animation - but only small files (few dozen KB max) or it would take very, very much time to load), no easy future feature enhancement with backwards compatibility and so on.
Application is created in simple scripting language (it doesn't even have classes
), with existing engine for various tasks - file IO, sprite rendering... It's just small experiment, and if I used C++ for example (technically, that's an extreme example), it would take a lot more to create, than three days and that doesn't just make sense for this kind of application. However there is one drawback - that particular engine has trouble with combination of images with alpha channel and antialiasing, so I disabled the second one, resulting in not very much alias.A little to "user interface": New frame is added by the green plus symbol (you can add only frames at the and) and the frame has initially same values as last frame created. Frames can be also removed, but only the last one. All keyframes are listed at the top, you can select one by clicking on it, so you can modify it's properties. To scroll the list, click at first/last frame listed. Pressing the yellow arrow starts animation from current keyframe, orange rectangle stops it. Remaining symbols are for opening/saving files (warning - it rewrites existing file if selected!). The rest are value controls, just press left mouse button and move the slider. Right click for animation algorithm (most valuable are linear and sine (sinus)). Don't forget to increase frame duration, to utilize keyframing.
I hope you would like it, even despite its simplicity and certain "user-hostility". You may consider it as a different form of fan art
, my fan art stories would be a very... weird for Housepets, so be glad you don't have to read them Program has a quickly created built-in animation, that starts playing when you execute it. (just press stop and delete all frames to create your own). Funny thing is, that I spend a few days trying to make it work, but when it finally works, I don't have time to play with it and create some interesting animations, so maybe would have that time
EDIT: By the way, you can animate Peanut's head, arm, front/back hand (lower part of arm, not palm), tail, front/back thigh, leg (lower part) and foot. You can change is position and angle, but you can't change angle of his body (to bend him forwards). The reason is, that all named parts consist of single joints, body contains a spine which is practically several dozens joints. I would need to cut image of his body to many parts, edit them, write proper algorithm for displaying for every single joint. That would take a lot of time, but wouldn't bring much benefits. Also I cannot create only one or two joints for body, because that would look too unnatural.
EDIT2: If anyone is interested where I took a Peanut image for this animator, here a little info: Various parts of his body are cut from several strips (I used Paint.Net editor) - not all of them are from same strip (and many strips were used just for observation, how are parts connected under varying angles). It's harder to find suitable parts, because in needed them to be from profile (just like in a classic platform games). I mainly used "There Went Nothing" for head and body and part of the arm. For hand, image from "No Excuses" was used (well it's rather a fist, I couldn't find suitable free palm). I had a little trouble finding suitable legs, which I can extract from a strip, since in most of them , but at the end, I used just horizontally mirrored and slightly changed arm image. But the biggest problem was the foot. I didn't found any suitable in correct angle, belonging to Peanut. However, Grape at the Cast page has foot displayed in the exact angle I needed, so I just recolored it, so technically, you have Peanut with Grape's foot
Here is small screenshot:
Simple Peanut Animator can be downloaded here (ZIP, 1.2 MB).
Also: Sorry if my English is not correct, I'm not native speaker and still high school student. But if you tell what mistakes I made, I would appreciate it. (yay, this year we've got a native American speaker from Kansas as a English teacher in the school
)
