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Smooth Moves - 2D Skeletal Animation

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by echo17, Feb 20, 2012.

  1. echo17

    echo17

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    Wow! Unity already approved my 1.5 update! Head on over to the asset store to pick it up. (See a couple posts up for a list of features added. 1.4.0 updates, including the iOS build fix are also included in this release)
     
  2. OmniverseProduct

    OmniverseProduct

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    That's because your product looks good, looks like it can kick some serious ass, and looks extremely helpful for 2D games. To hell with 2 birds. You're killing 3 birds with 1 stone with this product. I'm not joking, I mean every word of it. I plan on buying this when the time comes.
     
  3. soldmeadow

    soldmeadow

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    @echo17 - the bone colouring feature is awesome. Thanks for that.
     
  4. echo17

    echo17

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    Thanks for the kind words OmniverseProductions

    You are most welcome soldmeadow.
     
  5. echo17

    echo17

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    I plan to make a tutorial about this, but if you are building for iOS, be sure to set the .NET api compatibility to full .NET and not the subset. I use some structures that require more than the subset can handle. Sorry for the added overhead, but since it's nearly impossible to get a Unity project below 20MB anyway, it shouldn't be too big of a deal.

     
  6. jusamobile

    jusamobile

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    Nice updates, bought it :)

    If you were referring to the 20MB iOS limit then no need to worry about it anymore since it was raised to 50MB with new iPad announcement.
     
  7. echo17

    echo17

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    Nice catch jusamobile. I really need to watch the release video. This is great news for us Unity developers indeed.
     
  8. echo17

    echo17

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    This is more of a Unity issue, than a Smooth Moves one, but I was asked about how to move animations between projects, so I thought I'd post a copy of my reply here.

    Smooth Moves stores all the texture information as asset database GUIDs. This means that the base textures are not included in your final build, making the the project size as small as possible. But because of this method, it also means that just copying and pasting files in your operating system's browser will lose these GUID connections established in Unity. In order to keep these connections intact, you'll need to use Unity's built in export / import package functionality.

    To export animations in Unity, you'll need to export them as a package. You can export by:

    1) Selecting the assets you want to export (be sure to include animations, atlases, original textures, etc.) Probably best to select your entire project.
    2) Go to the menu "Assets->Export Package"
    3) Be sure all your assets are in the package, then click "Export"

    To bring this package into another project:

    1) Go to the menu "Assets->Import Package->Custom Package"
    2) Browse to your newly exported package and select it.

    This will keep all the connections intact and should be the only way you move files between projects. The base textures should be included in the package in case you want to use the editor in your new project. The editor references the base textures of your atlases, whereas the animation references just the atlas.

    Hope this helps.
     
  9. hima

    hima

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    Hi, echo17

    So, I finally decided to buy SmoothMoves and I have to say that this is a brilliant tool! The interface is really easy to use. Thanks to the detailed video tutorials, we could get animation done in no time!

    However, I seem to run into a problem that cause Unity to crash. When I'm trying to change the pivot point of each image, Unity freeze and I have to force quit Unity. This happen pretty often, so I hope you'll fix this as soon as possible.

    My environment is windows 7, Unity 3.5.0f5
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2012
  10. echo17

    echo17

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    Hi himatako,

    Sorry you're having troubles. I've tried to duplicate the error you are getting, but I can't seem to get the same behaviour. I've tried on Mac and Windows (granted I have XP, not Windows 7). Perhaps you can send me a package of your project to my email and I can take a look. It might just be something different in the way we have our projects set up.

    You can send the package to:

    support@echo17.com
     
  11. mplaczek

    mplaczek

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    Hi echo17,

    I really appreciate all the new features... I can see how the bone colouring etc. is going to be pretty handy down the line :)

    I was also having a problem keyframing the depth of one of the bones... but that seems to be have been fixed by installing the update too... So.... thanks!!

    Great stuff!
     
  12. hima

    hima

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    @echo17
    Somehow the problem is gone and it doesn't happen again anymore. Very weird :S Well, at least it all works fine now!

    Anyway, we've made a video just to show that we could achieve all this after we watch the tutorials : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34cBGjCKkgU Thanks for a great plugin :)
     
  13. echo17

    echo17

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    I guess the extra "Magic" plugin I included with Smooth Moves helped solve the problem :D. I'm glad it resolved itself.

    This is absolutely amazing! It's awesome to see what a real animator can do with my plugin; puts my programmer art to shame for sure :) Do you mind if I place a link to this video in my initial post on this thread? I think if people can see what can be done with the plugin they will certainly see its value.

    FYI, I added in a button on the animation control panel at the top (where the play / stop buttons are) that will allow you toggle the contrast of the background. The button looks like a checker board. It switches the background color from dark to light in case you have sprites that are too dark to see with the dark grey background. This button was added after the current tutorials, but will be explained in my revisions. It might help you out for this animation since there are a lot of dark colors in your sprites.

    If anyone else has any demos they'd like to share, please send in your links!
     
    Last edited: Mar 13, 2012
  14. hima

    hima

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    Thank you! And feel free to put it in your first post, though it's still just a test so if once we actually work on our project with better animations I'll let you know :D
    The tip about changing background would definitely come in handy for sure, thanks!
     
  15. echo17

    echo17

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    Thanks, himatako. I've put the video in my original post. Let me know if you have any updates or wish me to remove it. Keep up the good work!
     
  16. echo17

    echo17

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    Be sure to go to the Unity Store to pick up your free iOS and Android licenses while the sale lasts (April 8th)! Smooth Moves is highly optimized to run on these mobile platforms.
     
  17. runonthespot

    runonthespot

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  18. echo17

    echo17

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    Thanks, runonthespot. I saw this event and was tempted, but since I've only been on the market 3 weeks, I think I'll pass this time. Sorry! :)
     
  19. runonthespot

    runonthespot

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    Fair enough. Unlikely to deter me anyway. Teh Awesome.
     
  20. crystani

    crystani

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    Hi echo17,

    Smooth moves looked awesome, I purchased it, and I am testing smooth moves now. I am satisfied with the tool and the workflow, so I am testing it before moving to Smooth moves by checking some key features that I really need. (And the previous framework supported those features well. I want to move to smooth moves as it offers more intuitive tools and workflow besides it would be better for performance.)

    Things that I need now (to decide to move on):

    1. I couldn't find find any way of animating bone color. It is really necessary for animating fancy explosion effect or morphing. At least, I think I need to fade out some part of the bone animation. Suppose spark example (that you made) fades out when it is animating.

    2. Swapping atlas by atlas. (Not the material) I think that this could be done with sprites' names within atlases. I mean overriding previous atlas's sprite if there is a sprite with same name or something within overriding atlas. This will be really useful, for example, Armor atlas A to Armor atlas B for a character. Swapping things would be really tedious to do, and changing material isn't the solution for this because they would have quite different sprite distribution.

    3. Getting texture names list from atlas not only GUIDs. (If these were given I could have implemented 2. by myself).

    4. I think that you can expose sprites within sprite atlas like you do for BoneAnimationData...

    5. ReplaceBoneTexture that gets args as sprite names, not GUIDs.

    Things that I think might be better for Smooth moves to have:

    7. Animating assets without using sprite atlas. I thought it would be better... but I have discussed it with my partner, and we made decision that we will use sprite atlas. Not using sprite atlas for animation gives more freedom when I am not dealing with a lot of characters that makes a lot of draw calls. However, I remember it was one of the main reason for messing up the workflow and neatness of assets for the other 2d bone animation framework that I am using.

    8. FK/IK

    9. Sprite Atlas generation with Premultiplied alpha as result atlas.

    Thanks,

    Edit:

    1. there are bugs with Texture Search Replace count. It accepts minus values.
    2. I am willing to test development version of Smooth Motion. To tell the truth, I can't wait for long. If you want to have testers for new features (especially I asked for) before release it, I think I can help you find bugs as I am nowadays dealing with 2d bone animations intensively with a few project at the same time, in need for bone color animating and texture atlas exchange.
     
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2012
  21. echo17

    echo17

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    I had originally intended to have bone color animated and keyframed just like the position, scale, etc. I ran into a problem when trying to mix animations, however. The blending of the colors was becoming too confusing and not producing intuitive results. For example, when the attack animation plays on top of the walking or standing animation, the colors of the upper body bones either needed to be blended or some animation would have to take precedence.

    I had scrapped the bone colors in the initial release due to these complexities, but later brought them back as static colors that could be changed in the editor or at runtime, but not through animation curves. I did however include some functions in the boneanimation class that will allow you to modify the colors at runtime. There is also a function to flash the bone color which just smoothly interpolates between two colors over a given period of time. This function also allows you to repeat the blend over and over a set number (or infinite number) of times.

    This is definitely something to consider. I'll ponder this for a future release.

    See the response to #5 below:

    I'm not quite clear what you mean by exposing the sprites in the atlas...

    This was actually a database design decision that I'm pretty comfortable with. Using sprite names could cause complications if you decide to rename your source sprites. The boneanimation wouldn't know that this occurred outside of itself, so that would mean you would have to go back through your animation and change all the references there. Using the GUID, the animation doesn't care what you call your sprites since Unity keeps track of all this in its database.

    Coming from a database application developer background, I can say that it is always better to key off a unique identifier and never a name identifier in any sort of database. The visible names can change, but the GUID will stay the same.

    Having said all this, I created a nifty component that you can use in the editor to search and replace sprites so you never have to know what the GUID is. You can visually set up your texture swaps at design time, then implement them at runtime. Have a look at the tutorial on this here.

    Modifying Smooth Moves to accept individual textures unaffiliated with an atlas would be a major overhaul of the system. Since the majority of users for Smooth Moves will probably want to use the optimization power of the atlas, I think this is the best method of grouping textures.

    It actually does implement FK by transforming the children bones in relation to their parents. IK would be a nice feature however and I'll keep it in mind.

    I would have to look into that.

    Thanks for your suggestions. I can't promise any or all of these will be implemented, but it is nice to know what features people are looking for.
     
  22. crystani

    crystani

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    1. I see your point on blending colors of animation. However, I am sure that you are intended to make effects with smooth move seeing that the knight example has an effect made with smooth move. I believe that having color animation for each element is one of the most important feature to make authentic effects otherwise I have to use particle system to implement it or choose something else. I understand why you think that is not intuitive and gives weird results, but I think that using bone color animation and blending it to get weird result is something that users have to decide. After discussion with the designer (who is from cell animation industry and producing really impressive, stunning result with EasyMotion 2d that supports bone color animation to make effects.) of my team, I have concluded practically it is almost impossible to move to Smooth Moves without the color animation for our use. Exposing control over bone color for programmers is a good idea, but that is not the thing that we can use because artistic adjustments are completely done by the designer.

    2. Other suggestions are much less important for me now. It is good to know that changing atlas completely will be supported. In fact, I have to apologize that I was asking something that I would never use like features 3,4,5. I was pondering too much how I can implement feature 2 at that time. I basically agree with your design that conceal things I don't really have to care about.

    3. I think that supporting non-sprite atlas animation could be important when we suppose there is a game that character is customizable with 300 different parts and could be downloaded dynamically. I didn't speculate much for this, but I can't imagine beautiful solution for the use-case with sprite atlas only situation.

    In overall, I really like the neatness of workflow compared to the solution named EasyMotion2D. Smooth moves has better workflow, better performance... Even if I mentioned some features that EasyMotion 2d already has, none of those features except feature 1 (that my partner thinks too crucial) is the reason for making me stop.

    I hope your solution improves well, and I will use smooth moves in the future projects as long as I don't have barriers to implement features so I don't regret purchasing it (with my money not my company's :))
     
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2012
  23. echo17

    echo17

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    I just remembered why I chose to swap out materials instead of atlases. If you swap out an atlas in an animation, the texture sizes may not be the same. If you have set pivots on any of your bones, then the textures will probably not align properly due to the size differences. To circumvent this, I chose to swap out materials that have the exact same alignment of textures in them. I don't know if swapping atlases will be practical in the way that Smooth Moves is structured, but I'll take a look.
     
  24. kenwong

    kenwong

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    hey echo,

    thanks very much for putting this together. i'm exactly at the point in my project where i need exactly the kind of animation you're offering. so it's great to find your tool and great to see that you're supporting it so well after the initial release.

    i'm a bit of an animation noob so i'm sure i'll be back with questions. but just wanted to leave a thank you note first :D

    [edit] seems i can't scrub the tutorial videos on your website? i can scrub if i watch them on youtube, but then it's hard to find the next video to play, they're all out of order. a playlist would be nice :).
     
  25. echo17

    echo17

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    Thanks, kenwong.

    Good suggestion about the playlist on youtube. I've set one up for the knight animation walkthrough with the videos in order.
     
  26. echo17

    echo17

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    Great News!



    Smooth Moves and playMaker work great together, no update required. To get the full power of Smooth Moves, you'll need to use my set of custom actions, but if you just need basic animation, it will work right out of the box.

    My playMaker action scripts can be downloaded here: Actions

    Here's a simple tutorial on how to set up a Stand / Walk animation FSM, an Attack FSM, and a Blink FSM. I'm new to playMaker, so there may be better ways to set these up, but they get the job done.



     
    Last edited: Mar 20, 2012
  27. kenwong

    kenwong

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    woah, that was fast! thanks!
     
  28. hisshi

    hisshi

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    Hey there!

    Thanks for the awesome extension, it's exactly what I've been looking for! :D

    Just a few things that I'd like to say/ask:
    If you use the built-in "animation.crossfade()" instead of (let's say you load the BoneAnimationData into "player") "player.crossfade()", the animations don't play correctly. To be more precise, the depth and texture keys don't play (from what I've tested). And it seems that using PlayMaker gives the same results. I guess this could be fixed by making some custom actions to use the BoneAnimationData animation commands.

    In the project I'm working on, I'd like to use 3D backgrounds. Seeing as the 2D characters made with Smooth Moves have a 1 pixel = 1 unity unit scale ratio, the backgrounds would have to be HUGE in the modeling package and/or Unity, and this gives me a few problems with using lights (which need to have huge ranges and intensity) and physics (although I won't be using physics as core mechanics, so this is not really a big problem). Do you think it would be better to scale the characters down to fit the backgrounds or scale the backgrounds up to fit the characters?

    I undersand that we can use whatever shader we want for the characters created in Smooth Moves, so, as I want the character to be affected by scene lights, I've put a Transparent Diffuse shader on it, but it doesn't seem to work properly. The transparency works, but it stays dark even if I put a maximum intensity light in front of it. Do you know if it's something to do with the shader or is it related to the way Smooth Moves builds the sprites?

    Also a small (I think) request: do you think you can put in commands to select a whole column just by clicking the timeline? Or, more importantly, have the "Duplicate previous keyframes"/"Duplicate first keyframes" be available in the Right-Click menu from the timeline. Right now there's only "delete keyframe" and something else that I don't remember in this moment. It's just nit-picking, though. :3

    Well, that's about it. Thanks a lot for the great tool! :D

    Cheers,
    Hisshi.
     
  29. echo17

    echo17

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    Yeah, I noticed this last night. Calling the play functions on the animation component directly doesn't start the watcher that will update depth, colliders, texture changes, etc. I will create a whole set of wrappers for the bone animation to work properly in playMaker.

    Probably better to scale the bone animations down to avoid having to change all your background, physics, etc. All you need to do is set the scale on the bone animation gameobject and everything should work normally. I don't believe Unity will dynamically batch skinned meshes anyway so you won't be losing performance due to the scale factor being different.

    Looks like I need to add some normals to the mesh to properly calculate light. I'll try to get that in place in my next release.

    Good suggestion. That will be an easy update. I'll include that in the next release as well.
     
  30. echo17

    echo17

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    I've created a set of Smooth Moves action scripts that can be used in playMaker. Just download the scripts and place in your playMaker actions folder

    Download

    I'll add to these scripts as more functionality becomes available in Smooth Moves so check back on this thread for news of the updates.
     
  31. echo17

    echo17

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    I've updated the playMaker tutorial to use the full set of custom scripts. This will allow you to use Smooth Moves features such as switching textures, mixing textures, turning on/off colliders, firing user triggers, etc.

    You can find the custom action scripts in the above post, on the first post of this thread, or at my website at echo17.com
     
  32. Small Green Creature

    Small Green Creature

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    Hello,

    I'd like to know if Smooth Moves is also capable of doing simple sprite based animations.
     
  33. hisshi

    hisshi

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    Hey!

    Thanks a lot for the quick reply! :D
    And thanks for the PlayMaker actions too! They will really come in handy once I get to enemies/AI.

    Cheers,
    A happy customer! :3
     
  34. echo17

    echo17

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    Even better. You can run your sprite animations on top of skeletal animations. This gives you the ability to swap poses, change facial expressions, and any thing else you can think of.

    Check out my tutorials on echo17.com for examples of this. Specifically, you may want to watch:

    switching textures (switching the sword is a sprite animation):


    mixing textures (swapping the face texture out to make the knight blink):


    These are simple examples, but show the potential of how mixing sprite animation with skinned mesh animation can be very powerful.

    You're most welcome.
     
  35. kocherovets

    kocherovets

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    Hi!

    Very good tool! I need to create game with pixel perfect graphics. I have different assets for different resolutions. Can you give me solution for creation pixel perfect animation for different resolutions from my assets?
     
  36. echo17

    echo17

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    By default, Smooth Moves will create your meshes to 1 texture pixel = 1 screen pixel. This means that if you use an orthographic camera with the size set to half the screen height, your animations will be pixel perfect. If you want to use images with other resolutions, you can swap out materials at runtime. The meshes will stay the same size, but your mesh textures will have a different resolution, breaking the pixel perfect nature.

    This explanation is probably confusing, so I've created this image to try to help explain:



    You can see the original knight on the left is pixel perfect with the camera. The knight on the right has had his "Knight" material changed to a lower resolution version, but his "Weapon" material has stayed the same. This also shows that you can mix material resolutions within an animation if the animation has multiple materials. The knight is the same size in both cases, but the resolutions are different.

    Check out my tutorial on swapping materials:



    I hope this helps!
     
  37. kocherovets

    kocherovets

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    Thanks! It is good. What kind of naming I need to use for my assets in different resolutions they will be assembled right in atlases for creating swapped materials?
     
  38. echo17

    echo17

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    You will only need to create a single atlas for your animation (unless you are using multiple atlases for different portions of your animation). If you want to swap out a material at runtime, then you'll need to create a new material and texture. The new texture needs to be based on the original texture (all the positions of the individual sprites need to be in the same location or UV space).

    The names of your materials and textures won't matter since you call SwapMaterial manually in your code. To swap out a material, you'll just call something like:

    Code (csharp):
    1.  
    2. public BoneAnimation boneAnimation;
    3. public Material oldMaterial;
    4. public Material newMaterial;
    5.  
    6. void Start()
    7. {
    8.   boneAnimation.SwapMaterial(oldMaterial, newMaterial);
    9. }
    10.  
    You can also do this for more than one material in your animations like this:

    Code (csharp):
    1.  
    2. public BoneAnimation boneAnimation;
    3.  
    4. public Material oldMaterial_1;
    5. public Material newMaterial_1;
    6.  
    7. public Material oldMaterial_2;
    8. public Material newMaterial_2;
    9.  
    10. void Start()
    11. {
    12.   boneAnimation.SwapMaterial(oldMaterial_1, newMaterial_1);
    13.   boneAnimation.SwapMaterial(oldMaterial_2, newMaterial_2);
    14. }
    15.  
    You could even use swap material to keep the same resolution and texture, but use a different shader to give your animation a new look.
     
  39. kocherovets

    kocherovets

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    Ok! Thanks!
     
  40. Mikie

    Mikie

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    Does smooth moves work on Androids?
     
  41. echo17

    echo17

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    I don't have an android device, so I'm not sure. It works on iOS, windows, mac, and web player so I'm pretty sure it will work on Android.

    The only platform I am positive it won't work on is Flash.
     
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2012
  42. runonthespot

    runonthespot

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    Finally pulled the trigger and got this- very excited!
     
  43. kocherovets

    kocherovets

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    Now your tool create material and texture within self while creating atlas. What way you can recommend to create another materials and textures for different resolutions for existing atlas?
     
  44. echo17

    echo17

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    Awesome, enjoy!
     
  45. echo17

    echo17

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    You can do the following:

    1) duplicate the texture that the atlas creates
    2) In the inspector for that new texture, just force the size down to something smaller.
    3) Create a new material and attach the new texture
    4) Call SwapMaterial in code at runtime to change to the new material
     
  46. echo17

    echo17

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    Here's a preview of mesh normals which allow lighting. Coming in the next release (1.6).

     
  47. kocherovets

    kocherovets

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    I can not use this approach. I need use separate hi quality images for each sprite for each resolution. For example hand.png and hand_retina.png. And in the future I might need to add a larger images for animation.

    Can I use such approach?

    1) I create atlas, texture and material for non retina images in your tool. For example atlas_non_retina, material_non_retina, texture_non_retina.
    2) I create atlas, texture and material for retina images in your tool with double size dimensions. For example atlas_retina, material_retina, texture_retina.
    3) I do not use anything atlas_retina but use material_retina, texture_retina for swapping.

    Does Smooth Moves create correct material_retina, texture_retina for these purposes?
     
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2012
  48. echo17

    echo17

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    Sorry, I guess I'm not understanding the problem. It seems like you would do the following:

    1) Create atlas, texture, and material for the retina images first (the highest quality). Use these when creating your animation.
    2) Duplicate the texture that was created by the atlas for the retina images and set the new texture's maximum size to a lower value to make it lower resolution.
    3) Don't make a new atlas, just a new material and attach your lower resolution texture to the new material.
    4) In your code, swap the retina material with the non-retina material for lower resolution devices.

    The key is that you will make only one atlas: for the highest resolution textures. At runtime you are swapping the materials, not the atlases, so you only need a single atlas.

    This process also allows you to avoid having to make a whole set of textures for retina and another for non-retina since it will just be scaling the final texture.

    Be sure to watch my material swapping tutorial as it goes through a similar process.

    If you are still unsure of this process, please send me an email at support@echo17.com and hopefully I can help you out.
     
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2012
  49. hisshi

    hisshi

    Joined:
    Mar 19, 2012
    Posts:
    3
    Sheer joy! "TT___TT"

    *sorry for the spam...

    Oh, and to make this message not useless: for anybody using Windows Vista/7 and have downloaded the Smooth Moves Script Documentation, only to find out that it gives you a "Navigation to the webpage was canceled" error, right click the file and view it's properties. On the General tab, click the Unblock button (it's in the security section at the bottom). Hope it helps! :D

    Cheers,
    Hisshi.
     
  50. echo17

    echo17

    Joined:
    Nov 24, 2011
    Posts:
    1,249
    Here's another preview of 1.6: Keyframe color.

    You can now set color by animation clip, bone, and keyframe. This color is blended with the result of the mesh and bone color blending. So the final color of any given bone is calculated:

    Step #1) The mesh color and bone color are blended together based on the blend weight of the bone color.
    Step #2) The result of step #1 is blended with the keyframe color based on the blend weight at the time.

    This is calculated every frame, so you can continue to change your bone colors and mesh colors and the keyframe colors will blend right on top of that!



    So for example, if you have your keyframe color blend weight all the way up, your mesh and bone colors will be completely covered up. Conversely, if you turn your keyframe color blend weight all the way down (the default setting), your mesh and bone colors will show through.

    So the priority of color is (from highest to lowest):

    1) Keyframe color
    2) Bone color
    3) Mesh color
     
    Last edited: Mar 22, 2012