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Stop Motion Helper
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 This topic has been pinned, so it's probably important
Aeriz Jul 11, 2022 @ 9:46pm
How to Use World Keyframes to Activate Keypresses (e.g Emitters, Lights, etc.) - HOWTO
Hey all, just started using this tool and I have to say I'm quite impressed. I was having some trouble with getting world keyframes to work, but I figured it out while looking at the github page. Figured I would put it in here since I didn't see anything when I was doing my initial lookthrough.

1. Place your emitter (or whatever), make a mental note of your activation key. Mine is Numpad_Enter. (The complete list of usable activation keys is on the official github documentation)
2. Prep the emitter for animation the same way you would any other object.
3. Now make a keyframe for when you want it to activate.
4. IMPORTANT: GO INTO YOUR PROPERTIES MENU AND ENABLE WORLD KEYFRAMES
5. When you go to your list of objects available for animation, click on "world" and there should be three prompts: Console Command, Key to Press, Key to Release
6. Put your key to press in the box.
7. Create another keyframe right after the last one.
8. Put the same key in Key to Release. (Because the act of pressing a key is two parts, pressing and releasing, you may want to delay the release for whatever your purpose is)
9. If your emitter is a toggle, scrub ahead a couple frames and repeat steps 6-8 to turn it off.
10. ???
11. Profit.
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Showing 1-15 of 15 comments
PenolAkushari  [developer] Jul 12, 2022 @ 2:47pm 
yeah that sums the usage quite well. although i think i do also go over how these things work in the video tutorial, and video description there has key names too, just in case.

also, i've noticed that some of the gmod's entities seem to work better with the "virtual key" activations if they are not toggleable ones, so you can just use press keyframe as a start of some action thing and release to make it stop. i mostly recall thrusters being very weird if they were toggleable ones. also as a convenience i guess you always can press release keys in your very first frame just so if you happen to restart playback and you happened to be at a moment when a key was pressed but didn't reach the release keyframe, it'll release and stop doing whatever anyway.

i probably could make this whole thing a bit more simple in the future
#1
Aeriz Jul 12, 2022 @ 5:15pm 
Originally posted by PenolAkushari:
yeah that sums the usage quite well. although i think i do also go over how these things work in the video tutorial, and video description there has key names too, just in case.

also, i've noticed that some of the gmod's entities seem to work better with the "virtual key" activations if they are not toggleable ones, so you can just use press keyframe as a start of some action thing and release to make it stop. i mostly recall thrusters being very weird if they were toggleable ones. also as a convenience i guess you always can press release keys in your very first frame just so if you happen to restart playback and you happened to be at a moment when a key was pressed but didn't reach the release keyframe, it'll release and stop doing whatever anyway.

i probably could make this whole thing a bit more simple in the future
Thanks for your reply.
I do remember it being gone over in the video tutorial, but I figured I would make a text post just in case. (Also it completely slipped my mind :P)

Yeah, after I posted this, I started having some issues with the toggle-able emitter. I was doing an animation of someone jumping into water and it didn't capture correctly when I did the smh_makejpeg command. But it worked fine when I captured it live on OBS. It's a bit fiddly, but its not your fault. It's just the nature of the beast. Realtime effects with stop motion animation just doesn't work unless you go in and time the animation correctly.

I love the tool so far, though! As an aside, I noticed that there's a makejpeg command and a makescreenshot command, mentioning that makescreenshot outputs a .tga file. Is there any reason why there isn't an option for PNGs? Mainly because both of the options are two sides of the extreme when it comes to compression. JPEGs end up looking really compressed while TGAs are super nice, but one image is like 6mb. Just curious.

(If I had to hazard a guess, it has to come down to the way GMOD processes screenshots. Such as if you used the camera tool vs taking a steam screenshot? idk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
#2
PenolAkushari  [developer] Jul 12, 2022 @ 7:19pm 
makejpeg uses jpeg console commands, makescreenshot, well, screenshot. 2 of the things that are in-gmod. i've heard you can input a jpeg_quality 100 in console before taking screenshots to have them at max quality with no compression, so they won't have too much loss in quality, apparently those are just as good as pngs?

i've also happened to mess around with lua and made quite quick screenshotter thing, it is possible to get it currently on my github, although i was also thinking to put it into smh in the future either way.

just in case https://youtu.be/YQUmgGY1Pds
#3
Aeriz Jul 12, 2022 @ 8:24pm 
Originally posted by PenolAkushari:
i've heard you can input a jpeg_quality 100 in console before taking screenshots to have them at max quality with no compression, so they won't have too much loss in quality, apparently those are just as good as pngs?

Oh yo, no way? I'll give that a try next time, thanks for the tip!


Originally posted by PenolAkushari:
i've also happened to mess around with lua and made quite quick screenshotter thing, it is possible to get it currently on my github, although i was also thinking to put it into smh in the future either way.

That looks awesome! I think that would provide significant value to a future version of SMH. Not only to improve render times, but also to use stuff like soft lamps or emitters as you demonstrated.

Also I see that secret Komeiji
#4
B.R.A.V.O. 6 Aug 3, 2022 @ 8:31pm 
I binded the playback but it wont work
#5
PenolAkushari  [developer] Aug 3, 2022 @ 9:13pm 
Originally posted by B.R.A.V.O. 6:
I binded the playback but it wont work

does console give any errors?
#6
Aeriz Aug 4, 2022 @ 3:13am 
Originally posted by B.R.A.V.O. 6:
I binded the playback but it wont work
Keep in mind you'll need to hold it down. Also remember that you need to place the playhead at the beginning of the timeline.
#7
B.R.A.V.O. 6 Aug 5, 2022 @ 4:47pm 
Oh ok
#8
B.R.A.V.O. 6 Aug 15, 2022 @ 5:42pm 
How do you do face animation on the smh menu
#9
Skerion Oct 1, 2023 @ 4:05pm 
I tried to follow these instructions and I still wasn't able to make emitters and such activated by the world keyframes. I even disabled all of my addons besides the Stop Motion Helper and the Advanced Particle Controller. Is it possible that an update might have broken this part of the addon?
#10
PenolAkushari  [developer] Oct 1, 2023 @ 4:17pm 
Nope, it's just finnicky to get right. Are your particle things toggleable, and how do you set up the world keyframes? I think I'll improve these in the future for sure
#11
Skerion Oct 1, 2023 @ 8:11pm 
I made sure they weren't toggleable so that they'd be easier to set up in SMH. The way I've been making the keyframes was selecting the world in the properties menu, making a keyframe, and then going back into the properties menu and setting up the button input for that keyframe. I also made sure to add another keyframe after that one and set it up to release that button input.
Last edited by Skerion; Oct 1, 2023 @ 8:16pm
#12
Skerion Oct 1, 2023 @ 8:21pm 
The weirdest part is that I wasn't able to activate console commands with the world keyframes either, which I thought would have been fairly straight forward. The command I used was "mat_fullbright 1" and I even made sure that sv_cheats were enabled.
#13
PenolAkushari  [developer] Oct 1, 2023 @ 10:45pm 
Were the world keyframes doing console stuff enabled in the options menu?
#14
Skerion Oct 1, 2023 @ 11:44pm 
Oh my god, I completely missed that option.

Thanks for pointing that out. I enabled it and the world keyframes work now. I should have checked that sooner.
#15
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