Sprite animates where there is no keyframe

[wertandrew]

I just recently realised that using Ctrl and cloning, makes sprites follow the same animation of the parent. However, there is a really annoying issue that affects non-cloned sprites where I add a keyframe to a specific bone, and some other sprite that is not part of that skeleton is affected. For example, say I have two independent bones (that are not connected through a parent bone) and a sprite attached on them. Then, I add a keyframe to one bone to move to position B. After that, I add a keyframe that is between the previous keyframe and 0 and move the second bone to position C. When I do that and play, bone A will behave as if I added a keyframe to its animation, even though I didn't (extended timeline and there is nothing there), yet it stops and then continues. To make it work, I have to delete the affected sprites and start again and its annoying when there is previous animations that take time to remake. If there is any info on what is happening, please drop a comment because this is happening a lot and its very time consuming. Thanks 

 

[Mike at BrashMonkey]

Hi wertandrew,

holding control and clicking and dragging or rotating will clone whatever is selected, but not any animation data whatsoever. Can you please rephrase or clarify what you meant by ; "

I just recently realised that using Ctrl and cloning, makes sprites follow the same animation of the parent. "

You're going to need to record a video showing step by step what you're doing and what problem is occurring. Are you using non-linear easing (speed) curves?

Thanks.
-Mike at BrashMonkey

[Ninjadoodle]

This same thing is happening to me when animating just images (no bones). I have a bunch of bitmaps - one of them a ninja star, The ninja star should fly from left to right while some other images are being animated. Even tho I only have 2 keyframes for the ninja star, it stops (slows down) every time it encounters another bitmaps keyframe (there are no keyframes for the ninja star where this occurs).

I'm pretty sure that this is the same issue, but I can post this in it's own topic if needed.

Any help would be awesome!

Thank you in advance

[Mike at BrashMonkey]

It sound like you have a custom speed curve on your mainline keyframe.. every time you add a key frame to anything, it ads a mainline keyframe, which will force the ease in or out for work towards that new key-frame.

If that's the case, make sure your curves are on the specific images and not the mainline keys.. keep the curves for the mainline keys linear.

I cant know for sure or help further without seeing your actual Spriter project.

Feel free to email it to me at mike@brashmonkey.com and I'll take a look.

[Ninjadoodle]

Hi Mike

I've just sent you my project file, as I still can't work out what to do. I love spriter and I feel I getting used to it's workflow, but this has me stumped.

Thank you for offering to look at it!

*EDIT* - I've just had another look at this and I think I understand what you mean. I've removed any easing from the main keyframe and insead placed easing on each of the body parts that need it. This way the ninja star flies smoothly. Thank again for your help!!

[wertandrew]

Sry, I was busy and couldn't reply. I understand your solution Mike and it makes much sense. The only caveat is that this issue may come a lot in the future by other users as this is not expected behavior. I also had problems trying to set curves for keys, but seeing that curves are different for objects and keys it makes a lot of sense. The Ctrl thing I mentioned was a one time thing, I used Ctrl to clone an object that had an animation and then flipped its X. When I played the animation both objects moved and the flipped moved opposite to the original, so I thought that was intended so I didnt investigate more, I just deleted it and moved on. 

[Mike at BrashMonkey]

1 hour ago, wertandrew said:

Sry, I was busy and couldn't reply. I understand your solution Mike and it makes much sense. The only caveat is that this issue may come a lot in the future by other users as this is not expected behavior. I also had problems trying to set curves for keys, but seeing that curves are different for objects and keys it makes a lot of sense. The Ctrl thing I mentioned was a one time thing, I used Ctrl to clone an object that had an animation and then flipped its X. When I played the animation both objects moved and the flipped moved opposite to the original, so I thought that was intended so I didnt investigate more, I just deleted it and moved on. 

Glad I could help. The fact that any object also creates mainline keys which can cause such confusion is something we'll deal with in Spriter2, but it's too much of a core functionality of Spriter Pro to do anything about, other than to explain how to get around any issues or limitations whenever possible.

Cheers.

[wertandrew]

I tested again with new projects, knowing that extra info about curves and I still can't properly work. The thing is, as long as you add an animation with keys to certain body parts, if you want to add something afterwards (like vfx particles for example), you just cant. It ll mess the existing animation so the only way is to be proactive and keep things invisible and when needed make them visible. For example, think of this: You have a mole that goes into his hole and leaves dust clouds behind. You make the mole go down, you make the dust cloud, replace sprites to make it look like it dissolves, then you realise you want two extra mini clouds on the sides to go left and right. That's where the issues start. I add the extra sprites at the key I want, then in all other frames they disappear. I understand though that this is core functionality. Then, I copy the frame which i created the mini cloud, and paste on an empty keyframe. That will freeze the rest of the animation  which is something that doesnt make sense. I am coming from a flash animation BG and I ve used keyframes and modular animations and the way I am used to things working makes it really difficult to do even the simplest of animations here,even though its an amazing software that has a lot of potential. This is probably another topic, but when adding a new sprite in the scene, all frames from the one that the sprite was added and onwards should contain the sprite. Also, only the data inside the key should be copied when copying the keyframe, not everything. If I wanted everything, I would have "key all" first. Also, the timeline copy/paste functions should not be affected to whether I have selected something in the viewport, that also doesnt make sense (even though it can be a nice feature), because with complex animations, you may need to keep a sprite selected (because its hard to select with everything that is going on), while copying/pasting keys around. Imo, the timeline needs to be tweaked to be independent (selection-wise) from the viewport and you can add/remove stuff without affecting the rest (even at bone hierarchy level). Also some clear indications of whether something exists in the timeline would be great (or the ability to set which properties you want to see displayed in the timeline, like width, opacity, etc.) Check FL Studio's automation for more insight on this. Since I mentioned everything I want from Spriter, I might as well mention this too: if Spriter implements Grouped animations (think sprites in flash animations) and masks, I ll happily buy it for my team.

[Mike at BrashMonkey]

Do you happen to use Skype? Please send me a private message with your skype ID and I'll try to schedule a time to use screen-share and give you some critical pointers for handling such needs. I think what you want to do is possible, and less complicated than you think, but only if you know some of the tricky ways Spriter handles things "under the hood".

 

I'll try and make a public tutorial video covering such things, but I might not be able to for many days due to the holidays.

[Mike at BrashMonkey]

I finally got around to making a quick video about easing curves for multiple objects in Spriter. I hope it helps: