Images / Folders clarification

[rIKmAN]

The last couple of days I have been having problems when trying to use images from different folders within the same animation, and I am wondering if Lucid or BrashMonkey could confirm a few things for me.

Here is the situation:

I have a full character, animated with various animations, saved and working perfectly.

I then make a new animation, which for example is a background with swaying trees, flying birds, a car goes past or whatever else random scenic animations I choose.

Now, the problem starts here, as I want to literally place my pre-animated character into this scene and have him walk along the path, maybe interact with an object somewhere (sit on a bench for example)

How do I do this simply? Is it even possible?

I know I can place all the character images and all the background images in the same folder, but then I have to re-position, re-rig and re-animate my character every time I want him in a new scene? That can't be right.

I have tried copying/pasting keys from the other file and then editing the new scml manually using file paths with "../../../file.png" in them, which works great the first time I load the file after editing the paths.

But then if I save that again in Spriter it mangles the path in the scml to ".../file.png" when you save it so that the images don't load again the next time.

Why can I not simply drag in or load an existing .scml to use within another scene, am I missing something?

Also the "entitites" - I must be misunderstanding these, as I assumed they would be different "entities" within the animation - lets say a character and a vehicle which you want to animate getting in/out of.

I thought it would be a case of dragging in my pre-done "character" entity, my predone "car" entity, and then off I go animating them together.

However, when you add a new entity to an animation, they have their own timelines and you cannot make them interact as part of the same scene?

What am I missing here? Hopefully something obvious as this is frustrating.

Hope what I am saying is making sense, hopefully someone can help point me in the right direction.

PS. Just realised I asked a related question back in march: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10599

How far off is being able to import existing scml files into a single new project - is this what I am after?

If there is an existing way to do this other than manually recreating everything for each new animation (which seems ridiculous), please let me know! :)

[tombmonkey]

What you are asking for I don't think is possible currently with spriter, remember that spriter main purpose is to create small animations to be used in a game.

I think it would be nice to have a way to use animations you have created as part of other animations, it could have some neat uses like a boss being made of a bunch of parts that are animated independently and loop around while the boss does his stuff.

Also, it would be great to be able to make cutscenes in a more cinematic fashion, as "coding" them in an engine is always a pain and they never look just right.

[lucid]

importing projects into other projects is planned at some point and will help with this. There's some other stuff coming just around 1.0 that's not exactly what you're asking for, but will definitely solve the same problems, but we're not ready to announce anything beyond that just yet.

[rIKmAN]

Ahh damn, thanks for the info on this lucid.

With that said, then this means that I have to have EVERY animation for EVERY object that my

character interacts with, actually IN the character .scml file - otherwise I have to re-rig the character from scratch every time I want a new animation. Is that correct?

I have posted elsewhere (bugs forum) that when I tried to get around this by pasting the keys from each project (into a new project) and then manually editing the scml to "../../../file.png" to traverse paths to enable the images to load - then Spriter saves the paths as ".../file.png" meaning they don't work on next load.

Is this a bug or a feature to stop us using multiple source folders?

Something else I mentioned in another thread, is that with what you have said meaning the only way is to include all animations in one massive .scml file, then we need a way to move animations up and down the list in the Animations window.

Having to have so many animations in one file means it is really important to be able to organise them and keep them in some sort of order to stop me going insane.

Currently if I clone an animation, the new clone appears directly under it in the list and cannot be moved up or down so end up with a long unorganised list of animations which I have to waste time searching every time I try to find the one I want. Not productive at all.

Last question, what is the rough ETA on 1.0 - is it this side of xmas as that is the window I am looking at for release for my game.

Thanks for you time lucid, it's appreciated.

[Trumgottist]

a feature to stop us using multiple source folders?

You can use multiple source folders, as long as the Spriter file is at a higher level than those, so it won't have to back up the tree to find the images.

Here's an example of how two animations can share images while still having things neatly organised:

/project/goon.scml

/project/goon/body.png

/project/goon/hand.png

/project/tools/hammer.png

/project/hero.scml

/project/hero/body.png

/project/hero/foot.png

/project/tools/hammer.png

[rIKmAN]

a feature to stop us using multiple source folders?

You can use multiple source folders, as long as the Spriter file is at a higher level than those, so it won't have to back up the tree to find the images.

Here's an example of how two animations can share images while still having things neatly organised:

/project/goon.scml

/project/goon/body.png

/project/goon/hand.png

/project/tools/hammer.png

/project/hero.scml

/project/hero/body.png

/project/hero/foot.png

/project/tools/hammer.png

Hey trummgottist, thanks for the reply.

Yes sorry I understand that, what I mean is that if I set the paths to go back up to tree manually in Notepad, and then load that into Spriter B4 then it works perfectly, all images and keyframes.

However when I then re-save the file inside Spriter, and look at the .scml in Notepad again it has changed the paths to read ".../" rather than "../../../" which means it doesnt load any of the images when opened again in Spriter.

I am wondering if Spriter changing the paths upon save is a bug or a feature, as it does work when the paths are set manually.

[Trumgottist]

I can't answer that - I just wanted to give a solution to the problem that works with the current version of the program.

(But as a game engine programmer, I'm pretty happy with this limitation, as it matches how my engine handles all resources.)