Animating an Object tutorial - RPG in a Box

Animating an Object

This tutorial demonstrates how to create a default animation for an object in the Voxel Editor. The steps in this walk-through are also applicable when creating animations for other types of voxel models, for example the "walk" animation for a character.

In RPG in a Box, animations are created frame by frame, similar to stop-motion animation or the process you would follow to animate a 2D sprite. To begin, open the Voxel Editor and use the paint tool to create the desired model, or open an existing model you wish to animate. In this example, I will be animating the flame of a torch lamp. This will be the first frame of our animation.

Since the next frame of your animation will most likely be similar to the current frame (just slightly changed), the easiest method is to click the Duplicate Current Frame button on the animation toolbar that is located along the bottom of the Voxel Editor. This will make a copy of the current frame and the editor will then switch to the new frame.

Make any necessary changes to the model in this newly created frame, and repeat the process of duplicating the current frame until you have created all of the desired frames for your animation. In this example, I have created three frames where the flame is slightly different to give the appearance of a burning fire.

Next, you will want to create an animation definition for this model. Do so by clicking on the Add Animation button on the animation toolbar.

Enter a name for your animation in the Name box. If you specify a name of "default" for a tile or object, this animation will be played by default in the game. This is useful for our torch lamp, which we want to always be animated, or a river tile that should constantly be flowing. You will also want to select the start frame and end frame, a type, and a speed, which is measured in frames per second. For this example, we will use a type of "Loop", which means that once the last frame is displayed, it will loop back to the first frame and repeat indefinitely (or until the animation is changed by a script). The speed can be left at the default value for now, as it can be tweaked later on.

Click OK to close the dialog. The animation toolbar will now show the animation name in the Animations dropdown box. Click the Play button to try out the animation.

If you would like to make the animation faster or slower, find the animation in the Properties panel on the left and adjust the Speed property as necessary. The start frame, end frame, and type can also be modified from the Properties panel.

Once you are happy with the look of the animation, save the voxel model and add it to a map. The object will now be animated in your exported game!