From Moviesandbox

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) dfine 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 below to the same character.

Basic Data structure

Basic Data structure for 2D-Characters is the following:

<p>filename_XAAA_A00 whereas X is the angle of the texture (Front,Back,Left,Right) and AAA is the animation name (Walk,Idle,Anim).

Examples:
Garry_FWlk_A00 is the character Garry, depicting the front part of the character while walking.
Tobias_LIdl_A00 is the character Tobias, depicting the Left Side of the character while standing.