Miniguide: Importing and Editing Animations.

(requested by community member) this guide is intended to explain how to use the animation tab in the vanilla RPG maker VX ace. It is my hope to explain the function of each tool in that tab as well as lightly touch upon importing custom resourses.

Bear in mind that the basic RPGmaker VX ace combat system is not the most populaur system available; be sure to check to see what other battle-scripts are available before comitting too much energy in creating animations to ensure that the animations you create will mesh well with your chosen battle style and environment. The forum should have links to some such resourses. (as always, please follow the creator's instructions and remember to give credit where requested.)

Goal

This guide is designed to give a basic overview of the proccess of creating your own animations using the RPG maker VX ace. I will start with importing custom animations and then show you how to apply those resourses in the editor.

Importing Custom Animation graphics.

This segment covers how to import custom animations. Some of this information is found in the RPG maker VX ace help file.

Formatting

This engine can import PNG and JPG files.

Custom animations are divided into 192 by 192 squares which, individually, are one piece of an animation (block).

These blocks should be treated as parts of a slide progressing from the initialization of the animation towards the conclusion when the animation disappears (though, ofc, it is not essential that they be in order.)

Although the size of a block is fixed, the format in hieght can accomidate up to 5 columns and 20 rows of 192 x 192 blocks in a single file. The help file cautions that adding graphics that are on the higher end of that scale may hurt performance (loading times.)

When creating animations, it may be helpful to create an outline around each 192 x 192 block to ensure that you are keeping your animation within the block. Not keeping an animation within this boundry will result in cut-off pieces or segmented pictures.

Everything that is not a part of the animation should transparent, if practical. You can use a solid color in place of a transparency; the resourse editor can make one solid color transparent and one solid color translucent. (this seems to not apply to JPG files?)

(if you need a single animation larger than 192 x 192 pixles note that animations can be scaled up in size as part of the function of the animation editing window.)

To review:

each 192 x 192 section is one block.

in one file you can have:
5 coulmns.
1-20 rows.
of 192x192 blocks.

The The graphic hieght and width do not have to be a multipul of 192 for the editor to accept the file, but it is best to use exact size.

maximum format size:
width: 960 pixles
Hieght: 3840 pixles.

caution: don't try to edit existing animations in paint. They will lose transparency and ultimatly look really bad.

caution: adding a new animation with the same name overwrites the old file, even if it was a part of the basic set of animations.

Importing

Importing resourses is handled through the resourse manager tool on the toolbar.
Open it and select the first folder; Graphics/Animations

click import

find the file you would like to upload. Then select transparent colors.
(transparent color is not displayed, translucent color is displayed at a reduced opacity.)
(I'm lazy, so I'm importing a guide picture as an animation. Ignore topmost circle.)
(some formats may not require this step.)


The new animation will appear at the top of the list with a pink circle next to it. As you add more, these animations will be sorted alphabeticaly.

And you have your new custom animation! or at least the raw resourses for one. Next we'll get into how to use existing animation graphics.

Creating your Animation (CA) - setup

Now we're going to get into the database. First, open the database:

and from there go to the animations tab.Before you can create an animation you will need a free spot. Click on the change maximum button and add one to the maximum number:
I hope you'll forgive the picture spam. It's getting a little out of hand, I admit. Now that you have created your new, blank animation you can begin to edit it. Scroll down until you find the blank animation you created and then we can begin getting into the actual tools available.

CA - Adding Animation Graphics

The next step is to load an animation graphic. You can have up to two animation graphics loaded in one animation. You can load them here:

Select the file you want. You can also add tint to it in this menu.Please ignore the fact that my 'animation' is just a screenshot of an RPG maker VX ace resourse management window with a slightly different tint. Click 'ok' and the animation should now appear in your 'palate' at the bottom of the screen.

Ok, that looks awful. That's partly due to the fact that I ignored my own advice on the formatting. The game generated 5 columns but only 3 or so of the 192 x 192 regions had any content in them. Well, lets see if I can piece it back together...

CA - adding 'cells'

This part is simple, really. Once you have your animation loaded into the palate, just click on one of the boxes and then click in the middle window to add them to this frame of the animation. Each piece of an animation within a frame is called a 'cell.'

You can click on a graphic to drag it around. You can also shift-click to move the entire selection at once or alt-click to move a picture in smaller incriments. Pressting the arrow keys will also move the currently selected graphic.

Now lets see, one piece here, one piece there... done! what do you think?

CA - editing 'cells.'

There are, of course, many more things that we can do to edit this frame. For example, if I wanted the menu to show up at a 45 degree angle for some reason, I could right click on the 'cells' (the individual graphics,) add 45 to the angle in the menu that comes up
and re-arrange the pieces.



I could also have edited this with cell batch, but I wanted to note that frames can be individually edited by right-clicking on them first.

Unfortunately, the partial frames (the ones near the edge) vanished when rotating them. This is probably because they were not a full 192 x 192 box when they were loaded in. Just another problem with not following the formatting.

As you can see, there are many other things that can be edited from this menu:

Pattern: changes the graphic of the selected cell. Each pattern # is a 'Block' from the palate, in order from left to right.

X, Y: allows you to manually edit the graphic's location. The center of the screen is zero/zero.

zoom: expands or shrinks the size of the graphic.

angle: Shows the picture at the angle you input. Caps at 360. No idea why ;p

Flip: Inverts the current picture, much like looking in a mirror inverts your immage.

Opacity: changes how translucent the graphic is. This is useful for helping the animation's beginning and end feel more naturaul.

Blending: Blending has three options:
Normal keeps the base graphic's color.
Add 'lightens' the graphic's color.
subtract 'darkens' the graphic's color.
I'd stick with "add" and "normal" for the most part.

CA - Additional frames.

Now, if I were to click the "play" button now, I would see about 1/15th of a second's worth of a purple-tinted resourse management screen displayed at a 45 degree angle.

1/15th of a second is not very long. To make your animation long enough for the player to understand what's going on, you will need more frames.

I'm going to go back to a panel I showed you earlier, when explaining how to load in your graphic. This time the focus is on a different part of it;
]

So, bearing in mind that each frame is 1/15th of a second, how many frames should you have? This is a question for you to answer for yourself.

For a simple animation that is used often (especially if it is intended to repeat multipul times, such as a weapon's animation) you may not need more than 5 frames. For a mana-intensive spell calling down a dense rain of meteors, you might want to pull out all the stops and go for 60 (4 sec) to allow some time for the meteors to fall, land and explode all with enough drama and impact to gratify the player after the L1-L50 grind needed to get the spell in the first place.

edit: note that players tend to get tired of legnthy animations by about the 4th time they see it.

Generally, 1-2 seconds(15-30 frames) is ideal Imo.

In my case, owing to the simplicity of my animation (it only has one "pose") I'll start with five frames, or 1/3 of a second.

The additional frames will be displayed on the lefthand menu:

CA - mass editing tools, progression.

These additional frames will start out blank. Click on a different frame to edit it.

Each frame will need its own cells, and the frames will procede in sequence from 1 to the max when played. Play back your animation often to see how it looks; it may not look quite the same as you though it was going to.

Essentially, you are animating, which is very similar to how a movie works; rapidly showing pictures in sequence that make the sceen appear to move. Each frame must follow a logical progression for the end result to look good, and changes from frame to frame will be slight. Picture as you edit how much a fireball would have changed in 1/15 of a second. Generally not very much, but over the course of a few frames the animation will begin to take shape.

Even though each frame starts out blank, you don't have to start each frame from scratch. As I just said, the changes are generally slight from frame to frame. I suggest starting each frame by clicking the "copy previous" tool and then editing the animation according to what you feel should have changed.

Now I'll list the other tools available to you. I should have mentioned them all earlier, but I wanted to wait until there was a point to using them; many of these are intended to be used across several frames or more towards the end of the proccess.

Position:

This tool is found in the same area where we added graphics and frames.

Center: If you are creating a group animation that affects the entire screen, use this to prevent the animation repeating on each individual target.

Head: The center point (X,0/Y,0) will be on the upper part of the target enemy's graphic.

Chest: targets the middle of the graphic

Feet: targets the base of the graphic.

This is mostly to create a guideline for the person creating the animation.

Change Target:

You may have noticed the angel and asassin lurking in the background on the center screen. If you want to see how an animation looks on different monsters, click on this button to change which monster graphic is displayed. You can find it on the list of buttons on the right side of the window.

Unfortunatly, only one graphic can be displayed at a time, so a battle test would be needed to see how it looks on groups (which is an entirely different part of the database so I won't get into that yet.)

Paste last

clones the last frame's graphics. Very helpful when starting on editing a new frame, as I mentioned earlier. This button is just below change target on the right side of the window.

Copy frames

Sorry to dissapoint, but... I don't get this one at all. I think it's a multi-coppy function but had difficulty figuring it out even after reading the help file. I never use it :p

Clear Frames

A multi-clear tool that clears several frames of all graphics.

Tweening

A mass-edit tool for making an animation change smoothly accross several frames. It seems to count only the start and end frame for the purposes of determining what to change. For instance, if you just slapped a sword graphic on the top-right end of the screen for the first frame, then the bottom-left end of the screen on for the tenth frame and used tweening accross those 10 frames, tweening would have the sword graphic procede at an even pace accross the center of the screen from frame to frame.

Limitations: It cannot handle changes in pace or curves in the path of the animation; it will procede from point A to point B at an even pace.

Frames: which frames are affected by the tweening.

Cells: which cells are affected by the tweening. (A cell is one graphic that has been placed in a frame. for example, the first graphic you place in each frame is 'cell 1' the second is in 'cell 2' and so forth.)

Angle: if the start and end angle are different, tweening will slowly rotate the graphic from frame to frame at an even pace.

Pattern: if the pattern is different between start and finish, cycles through patterns at an even pace as the animation proggresses.

Opacity/blending: if opacity or blending are different between the start point and finish point, procedes at an even pace between the two.

Cell Batch

This mass-edits cells accross several frames. It is similar in function to the menu which is brought up when you right-click on a cell. (A definition of a cell is given under tweening)
As I went over these functions earlier, I will not discuss them again here.

Entire Slide

Remember when I mentioned that shift-click can move all cells at once? This is that, but accross all frames. It shifts the position of a group of frames based on what you input into "X/Y"

Play

Plays the animation back to you. This is how you test how the animation looks.

Here's that old window again for you to stare at.

CA - Sounds and light effects.

An animation is all well and good, but that fireball creates light and makes a sound when it connects. We're a little past the era of silent pictures now.

By now you've probably noticed the box at the top-middle of the window entitled "SE and Flash Timing." This is the window for editing sound effects and light effects.



Double-click on it to begin.

Frame

This is why I covered frames before discussing sound and light effects. This selects the frame that this effect will BEGIN on. Sounds have a preset duration (although pitch may slightly adjust this legnth?) and flash effects have a durration set at the bottom of the screen:



The legnth is set in frames, which constitute 1/15th of a second (as I stated earlier.)

Flash:

The buttons near the top select the target of the flash.

None

use this when you are only adding a sound.

Target

Only the target(s) will be illuminated by this flash.

Screen

The entire screen will be illuminated by this flash.

Hide Target

This is not a flash effect, but a seperate effect entirely. It essentially renders the target(s) transparent, causing them to vanish for a set number of frames.

It is important to note that all these effects (other than "none") are tied to durration.

Sounds

Sounds can be found here:




Here, you can select and playtest various sound effects. Remember to set the frame (see earlier headlines in the segment) to the point that you want the sound to start at.

Although you can have a flash and sound in the same window, they will share a start point if they are both together. If you don't want them to appear at the same time, you can set them up seperately.

Now... what kind of sound effect goes with a window of text? Chime?



I wish I could share it with you in it's full glory, but I don't even know if I have a movie editor. You'll have to imagine how epic it is for yourself.

You may have noticed that I had to add a few frames. It just didn't look right with just five. The animation rotates as a whole menu, then splits into four pieces. After that point the pieces rotate independent of each other and fade, remaining in the same place even though it looks like the menu is splitting apart. The flashes are all pink.

Applying your animation to a skill or item.

You may already know this part, but just in case:




and then find your animation in the list. The drop-down menu is in a slightly different place in the weapons menu, but I'm sure you can find it ok.

Battle test

It can be helpful to test some animations against groups of monsters to make sure it still looks right. This is generally best done with a battle test:




Select a different troop before clicking battle test if you need to test against more powerful monsters.

Make sure to give the player you're testing with acess to something that uses the animation before testing. a weapon, spell or 'spell scroll' will do. You can add weapons and armor directly in battle test, but skills will need to be added in the class or actor tab before they will be available to the player. All consumable items are always available to the player in a battle test (99 quantity.)

Conclusion

I hope this has all been helpful and informative. I know I've learned a few things (I never used Tweening before I wrote this.)

If there's anything you'd like explained better, any questions or if you notice an area that my guide could improve on (besides spelling & grammer :p) feel free to comment. Thanks for reading.

Here's a picture of a REAL hand-made animation for your enjoyment. I admit it was also quite simple in design, but it came out much better than expected. All I had to do was add enough opacity that nobody would know the difference ;p

[DrEthan]

yeah that is what i did

[Everscrub]

Yeah, it's not that hard. All you need is 1-2 varriables and some condition branches here and there to check for it.

[DrEthan]

oh btw i figured out on my own how to do karma so you are off the hook XD

[Everscrub]

np.

[DrEthan]

Wow thanks man.