From Moviesandbox

Revision as of 10:09, 27 June 2007

Introduction

in this document, we will show you how to create your 2D-Character and set it up so it works inside Moviesandbox. This Tutorial requires knowledge of the Unreal Editor and Moviesandbox, so please be sure you feel familiar with those tools before creating your own characters.
For beginner tutorials, go visit the Tutorials page.

How 2D-Characters are set up

The 2D-Characters in Moviesandbox are basically a set of textures that are drawn on the screen. The angle from which you look at the character, the characters own rotation and the state the character is in (i.e. walking, idling, animating) define the texture that is displayed.

It works pretty much like the character display in the very first version of the game DOOM from idSoftware[1].
Right now, Moviesandbox treats every 2D-Character as a 4-sided object, so you would need 4 textures for a fully functioning character. Here's an example of what an Idle texture from the front and from the side might look like.

Obviously, you would want to use Alpha channels on the textures, and a texture sequence instead of just one static texture.
Moviesandbox uses its own naming convention to keep track of the different textures that belong to the same character.

Creating a simple character

As mentioned above, Moviesandbox treats 2D characters as if they would have only 4 sides, thus, each characters must have a texture for each side. In addition to that, every character has at least three states - moving, idling and animating.
Every state needs textures for all 4 sides of the character to display correctly, which leaves you with 12 textures or texture sequences to be generated.

Fill in example character textures here

Once you have your textures set up, import them into UnrealEd in your own package and follow the naming convention described below.

File Naming conventions

Every Texture's name consists of the character name followed by the side and then the state that the texture represents. To make life easier and filenames smaller, the following abbreviations are used:
for the 4 sides:

• F=Front
• L=Left
• R=Right
• B=Back

and for the 3 states:

• Idle=Idle
• Move=Move
• Anim=Animate

To sum things up, you should follow this syntax when naming your character:

<p>

The following is a list of all the possible Appendices to your textures:
FileNameIdleF_A00
FileNameIdleB_A00
FileNameIdleL_A00
FileNameIdleR_A00

FileNameMoveF_A00
FileNameMoveB_A00
FileNameMoveL_A00
FileNameMoveR_A00

FileNameAnimF_A00
FileNameAnimB_A00
FileNameAnimL_A00
FileNameAnimR_A00

Moviesandbox will look for all these files in order to create your character!
Examples:
GarryMoveF_A00 is the character Garry, depicting the front part of the character while walking.
TobiasIdleL_A00 is the character Tobias, depicting the Left Side of the character while standing.

Import all your Textures into an Unreal Texture Package using either the Unreal Editor or UCC.exe and write down the name of your package and textures.
Important:
If you're using V1350 or earlier, you have to put a number in every texture's "MaxFrameRate"-Property in UnrealEd or else your Character won't move! I suggest setting it to 12. The number makes sure that the character is only moved when the movement texture changes (and so does not appear to be sliding).

the 2D Character Editor

Once all the prerequisites are met, open the 2DCharacterEditor in MovieSandbox and fill in the Materials without the Appendices into the diffeent state windows. Ignore the head part for now. Click on "Save Character" and your character will appear in the SceneEditor under the 2DCharacter Menu.

This needs more work, i know.

--fiezi 20:24, 10 July 2006 (CEST)