CryAnimTools
(CryAnimTools are old and have been
replaced with animTools, they still exist and are accessible through
the Control Panel. This is mainly for reference and some old tools that
were not merged into animTools)
CryPlantKey
CryPlantKey is one of the first
cryTools written, it is used to plant a node (i.e. foot) in a spot
specified by the animator for a given number of frames.
Key Type
Here you can set the key type of the keys that are generated. You may
choose from any of the three supported Biped key types: Planted,
Sliding, or Free. Checking 'Only for existing' will only overwrite the
existing keys, if this is unchecked the tool will default to one key
per frame.
Begin/End (Set Range)
You can set a range either by entering a numeric range, or by clicking
the 'begin' and 'end' buttons to dump the current time into the field.
Use Begin/End - Use Timeline
Upon pressing either of these, the script will run. When 'Use
Begin/End' is pressed, the values entered in the Begin/End fields will
be used, when pressing 'Use Animation Range', the beginning and ending
of the animation range will be used.
BipedTools
The BipedTools are an extremely user friendly front end to more laborious Biped-related tasks.
Biped Selection
At the top you see this drop down menu where you select the biped you
are currently wanting to manipulate. This list is set at the time you
open the Animation tools, if you have imported other biped and would
like to update/refresh the list, click the arrow: < . (less than)
Bip Motion Menu
This takes you to the motion menu tab for the current biped loaded in the tools.
LoadBIP
An improved (resizable) BIP file requester for loading animations.
Figure Mode / Hide Biped [Toggles]
These two checkbuttons are toggles, meaning that when you press 'Figure
Mode' it stays hilighted for the duration that the characte is in
figure mode. 'Hide Biped is one of the most used buttons in the entire
Aniamtion toolset; it just hides the entire skeleton.
In Place Mode [Toggle]
Clikcing the 'In place Mode' toggle will turn on In Place Mode, which
constrains the motion on X and Y, however, pressing 'X or Y will
constrain the motion to only the selected axis.
Select Only Biped Bones
Selects the original biped skeleton, and ignores any extra helper bones
that have been added. Useful when you want to load up a pose or do some
motion panel operation to all the original biped bones. (motion panel
biped options will not load if a single non-original biped bone is in
the current selection)
Clamp Timeline
This clamps the timeline at the current key, if you click 'At Last Key'
it will clamp the timeline at the last keyframe of the currently
selected object.
Reverse Animation to FBX Skeleton
This will generate a skeleton with our internal FBX naming convention
and it will reverse the current animation onto that skeleton. Just give
the script the start and end frames of the animation you would like to
reverse.
Attach Biped to FBX Skeleton / Delete FBX Skeleton
This will copy the animation of an imported FBX skeleton with the
correct naming convention to the currently loaded biped. 'Delete FBX
Skeleton' removes the FBX skeleton.
Collections
This loads Biped pose collections and allows you to manually sync to the latest files from Perforce.
Crysis Rig Navigator
This acts as a synaptic rig element selector, much like what people are
used to in Maya, XSI, and MotionBuilder. You can click on part of the
rig to select it. When working with multiple bipeds in the same scene,
remember to select the biped you want to manipulate at the top of the
BipedTools rollout.
Internal Tools/Fixes
Animation Setup
This drop down menu offers you the choices of none, pistol, rifle, mg,
and law. Upon selecting a weapon, it appears in the character's hand
Add Trooper Weapon Bone
This adds a correctly oriented trooper weapon bone into the trooper
hierarchy. It was made when Antoine needed to iterate through all
trooper animations and add a central weapon bone.
XAF Import/Export
This is an XAF importer/exporter for non human characters. The idea was
to save XML Animation files (XAF) for all non human characters like we
do BIPs for humans. I implemented it for the trooper, but Animation
never used it and it does not work for other characters currently.
GeneralTools
Change Rotation to TCB
This iterates through all selected objects and changes their rotation
controllers to TCB. It really comes in handy when trying to export
vehicles into CryEngine as CGAs (all moving parts need to be TCB).
Bake Motion to Keys
Bakes all motion on an object to dense keys (1 key/frame)
RangeView
This drop down menu is populated by
Animator-created 'time-tagged' sequences. It reads in the names and
allows you to select individual sequences. When a sequence is selected,
the timeline beginning/end is set the the time-tagged range's
beginning/ending.
MirrorArms
When you press 'Mirror' the animation
from one arm to the other will be mirrored for the frames currently in
the timeline. 'copy/mirror root anim' will also copy the root and
reverse it's animation. Keep in mind that you need to be using the
Crysis first person arms rig, and also that these newly created
keyframes might not tween correctly to other keys outside of the
animation range, so you might want to do all keys at once.
Batch Export
The Batch Exporter was created to
manipulate many animations at once, and make sweeping changes in
animation data. You can do things like add new procedurally driven
bones to a hierarchy then batch export these bones/animation to 3,000
animations. You could also flip every animation 180 deg on the Z axis.
The exporter works by loading many BIP animations onto a currently
loaded Biped, and exporting them one by one. This makes it very
flexible, and allows you to generate sweeping changes to the animation
dataset with relative ease.
Specify Modes
The idea was that here you couls specify modes, switching from a BIP
batch exporter to an XAF batch exporter. That idea has currently been
put on hold, since XAF was not switched to as a standard animation
format for non-human characters.
Batch Folder / Save Folder
Here you set the Batch Folder that has trhe BIP files you would like to
batch process/export, you also select the Save Folder. Upon selecting
the Batch Folder the Export button should enable with the number of bip
files there are present to be batched.
Batching Mutliple Folders
If you check the box next to Multiple Folders, the Add to list button
should become active. If you press this, your current Batch/Save
folders will be saved in a que below (Folders to Process in List:). You
can save your que and load old queues you have made.
Generate CAL File
This would generate a CAL file for the animations you were batch
exporting, making it easier to test them and also would make it so you
did not need to dump those new animations directly into your build. The
CAL file system has changed a lot in the past months, so this may no
longer work.
Log to File
With this enabled, cryTools will generate a log file to the folder in which you are exporting. Here is an example:
7/20/2006 12:38:22 PM --- Exporting combat_blinded_nw_01
7/20/2006 12:38:30 PM --- Exporting combat_blinded_pistol_01
7/20/2006 12:38:40 PM --- Exporting combat_blinded_rifle_01
7/20/2006 12:38:52 PM --- Exporting combat_callBase_01
Flip on Z Axis
This will flip all exported animation on the Z axis. This was used to
convert all out animations from facing -Y direction to +Y direction.
Export RAW CAF Data
This is somewhat deprecated. It used to export RAW CAF animation data,
but now we use a different RAW format and compression scheme. This
option however, is still here for testing and backwards compatibility.
Save BIP/XAF Files
With this option enabled, the Batch Exporter will also save the BIP
file when it exports. If you check 'Only Save, No Export, the Batch
Exporter becomes a kind of "Batch Saver" that can step through folders
of BIP files and load them onto a new skeleton and resave them with new
bones or other changes.