App:z64anim
320px z64anim console and viewing window | |
Original author(s) | spinout |
---|---|
Written in | C |
Operating system | Cross platform |
Available in | English |
Type | CLI tool |
License | Open Source |
Website | z64anim on bitbucket. |
Applicable game(s) | all (works with objects) |
z64anim is a tool in development by spinout with the purpose of viewing and modifying an animated object's animation and skeleton. It uses SDL, GL, threads, libobj, xdaniel's libbadRDP and the required dependencies for these libraries - libpng and lz. In its current state, it has two windows: a viewing window, and a command-line console window. The console has many commands which control viewing and editing of animations. The window is used for display list, translation and rotation axis selection and manipulation on a more graphical level.
On August 19, 2011, spinout put z64anim on bitbucket[1], and there has been some development going on as of mid September 2011. All future binary and sources can be found here.
Contents
Usage
Before using:
- Be at least somewhat familiar with skeletons and animations - an understanding of the binary structure is not critical but an understanding of rotations used in animations and translation of children/next limbs is reccomended
- Make sure you have the latest version of z64anim
- Make sure you have your object ready to use. You could do some trickery with the -o and -s CMD arguments (see below) to load an object directly from ROM, but I do not recommend doing so and I am not completely sure if the saving routine will work as expected.
Invoking z64anim
z64anim can, optionally, be passed command line arguments. The last argument is to be an object containing Animations. The arguments before that can be:
- -G
- Enable OpenGL ARB extensions in badrdp
- -o OFF
- Read data from the input file starting at offset OFF (Default: 0)
- -s SIZ
- Read SIZ bytes of data. (Default: OFF -> end)
- -b BASE
- Set base address of data to BASE (Default: 0x06000000)
Example:
z64anim.exe object_sk2.zobj
Due to the fact that z64anim expects the last argument to be the object file itself, an object file can be dragged and dropped onto the application.
Window controls
Keyboard controls
Key(s) | Action |
w,s,a,d | Move camera |
q,e | Change camera speed |
r | Reset camera |
u,j | Increase/decrease animation playback speed |
h,k | Change to next/previous animation |
(space) | Pause/play animation |
y,i | Increase/decrease current animation/translation value |
o,l | Increase/decrease current animation index |
(up arrow) | Select previous limb |
(down arrow) | Select next limb |
(right arrow) | Select parent limb |
(left arrow) | Select child limb |
x | Toggle x/y/z axis |
v | Toggle drawing of rotation guides |
m | Switch edit mode (display list/translation/rotation) |
Mouse Controls
The mouse is used for camera rotation when the left mouse button is held and dragged, and display lists/editing axis (when visible) can be selected with a right click.
Console Commands
Basics
These commands are always available, even when an object isn't loaded.
- help
- Print all controls for console and viewing window.
- quit
- Exit z64anim
- load F B A S
- Load S bytes from file F at offset A as address B. If B, A, and S are ommited, it is assumed to load the entire file from base address 0x06000000 - which is what most objects use.
Viewer Control
These commands control the rendering animation in the rendering window.
- pause
- Pause playing the current animation. Rendering window equivalent (toggle): (space)
- play
- Resume playing the current animation. Rendering window equivalent (toggle): (space)
- step
- Step the current animation by one frame. Rendering window equivalent: 'n'
- hideaxis
- Hide editor axis of each joint. Rendering window equivalent (toggle): 'v'
- showaxis
- Show editor axis of each joint. Rendering window equivalent (toggle): 'v'
- select-disable
- Disable selection of displaylists or editor axis
- select-enable
- Enable selection of displaylists or editor axis
- scale V
- Set the scale of the editor axis
Animation
- anim-info
- List information on the current animation
- anim-list
- List all known animations
- anim-switch N
- Switch the current animation to animation N.
- anim-next
- Switch to the next animation. Rendering window equivalent: 'k' ('h' for previous in rendering window)
- anim-rotations
- List all valid rotation indicies
Skeleton
- skel-info
- Display skeleton information
- skel-reset
- Reset the entire skeleton to the state it was at when last opened or saved
Display Lists
- dl-list
- List all known display lists
- dl-switch N
- Change current limb's display list to display list N
- dl-curr
- Print current display list
- dl-export OBJ
- Export the current DL as wavefront .obj
- dl-import OBJ SIZ
- Import the wavefront .obj file in FILE at size SCALE. Todo: Allow user to specify what display list # or a new index.
Values
- val-info
- Print information on currently selected value
- val-set V
- Set the current value (rotation, translation and display list #s)
- val-index I
- Set the current rotation index (rotations only)
- val-series S I
- Set the series of animated rotation values starting at S degrees increasing by I degrees each frame
- val-seriesr S I
- Set the series of animated rotation values starting at S degrees increasing by I degrees for each frame for the first half of the frames, then decreasing by I back to S
Selection
- axis A
- Switch to axis A (either `x', `y' or `z'). Rendering window equivalent (toggle): 'x'
- rot
- Switch to editing rotation. Rendering window equivalent (toggle): 'm'
- trans
- Switch to editing translation. Rendering window equivalent (toggle): 'm'
- dlist
- Switch to editing display list. Rendering window equivalent (toggle): 'm'
- child
- Select the current limb's child, if possible. Rendering window equivalent: (right)
- parent
- Select the current limb's parent, if possible. Rendering window equivalent: (left)
- next
- Select the next limb, if possible. Rendering window equivalent: (up)
- previous
- Select the previous limb, if possible. Rendering window equivalent: (down)
Miscellaneous
- save
- Apply all changes made
- adopt N
- Set the current limb's child to limb N
Planned
I'm probably going to have to write a library which stores and describes binary data with local pointers to implement all of these commands.
- dl-export-all DIR
- Export all DLs as wavefront .obj
- dl-scale S
- Scale the current display list to scale S
- val-reset
- Reset the current value
- add-dlist OFFSET
- Add the display list at OFFSET to the list of known display lists
- anim-new
- Create and select a new one-frame animation with no animated values.
- anim-setframes N
- Make the animation an N framed animation (adding & removing frames as needed)
- anim-addtrack
- Add a new animated list of values
- anim-rmtrack
- Remove an animated list of values
- anim-addstill
- Add a new still value
- anim-rmstill
- Remove a still value
- skel-new
- create a new skeleton with one limb
- addchild
- Add a child limb
- rmchild
- Remove the child limb and it's children/siblings (assuming they are not used elsewhere)
- popchild
- Set the child limb to the child limb's sibling limb, destroy original child limb and it's children which are not used elsewhere.
- addnext
- Add a next limb
- rmnext
- Remove the next limb and it's children (assuming they are not used elsewhere)
All of these functions which modify how many members are in a hierarchy/skeleton must also fix animations.