[Feature under Review] How do you manage asset animations?

[Luni]

Hey y’all! I’m working on how to replace and manage animation frames on GDevelop, and I’d like to see how you’re doing it.
Send me a screen capture where you explain how do you replace/ rework/ add/ update and re upload your asset animations (from your local computer with Photoshop, frames from TV Paint, with links for each frame, from Google Drive or OneDrive, etc…).

Why?
Because before starting any design solution, I need to see as many use cases as possible! The easy, the weird, the bad, and the ugly. So, if you think that your process is “not ideal”, if opening the “game ressources window” is a pain, etc. that’s exactly the kind of process that I’d like to see.

How to participate?
In an ideal world, I would jump on 1 to 1 video calls with each of you so I can observe, and ask questions, but finding a time that works can be a little tricky. So, this is why I’m trying a “non-moderated” asynchronous approach.
To keep it as methodical as possible, please follow these instructions:

• You have to be sure that you can record spoken audio and your screen at the same time. If you don’t have a way to do this yet, I use Chrome’s extension “Bubbles” which doesn’t require any download nor local installation.

• Show me where do you store your Assets in general (for one or all your games so far) and explain why you keep them here (do you hate to have stuff in local? are you collaborating with an artist that sends you the assets as a zip? did you buy an asset pack and kept it in local?)

• Demonstrate and narrate how do you update, replace or manage your asset animations. Take your time, let me know what you dislike.

Remember that this topic explores How and Why you do it like this. We’re not thinking about any solutions yet (but you’re allowed to say “It would be helpful if I could…”).
Feel free to speak in French, Portuguese or Spanish if you don’t feel comfortable in English.
Mobile experiences (mobile telephone or tablet) are allowed and encouraged to participate too!

Once you’re done, reply to this topic and I’ll contact you so you can share the link of your video with me privately. Of course, when the feature is released, your username will appear on the credits.

Thanks!
Watch you soon!
Luni

[Rasterisko]

Hello, Luni!

I want to participate, but I had two doubts:

1. About “how do you replace your asset animations” I don’t know if it was very clear to me. Just want to know how we update our assets that are already in the game?

2. Until when will you be receiving the records?

Thanks.

[Luni]

Hello Rasterisko,
Thank you for wanting to participate. So, I am asking the creators to show me how they currently execute on the animation timeline what they want to accomplish. My question has to do (mostly) with updating, and replacing existing animation frames, and uploading new animation frames and animation status.

In your case, you mentioned that you anted numbered frames because you used them for skins in a specific way. Well, then I’d like to see how you update your assets (the characters and their skins) and how do you have to organise them, so you can use them as you want. Don’t forget to explain why the current way is not as efficient as you’d like it to be.

As for the time limit, I’d like to receive them on February 3rd so I can watch them all and have the time to considered them for my design. But please send it to me even if the date has passed!

Thanks!

[DasBilligeAlien]

Howdy,

I mostly work locally, As I am deaf I also mostly work with visual assets and no sound for my personal projects.
I have too ways to replace assets in my mainly very small projects. When i change stuff like frame amount in animations or its just one asset i replace, I go this way:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18oNV1ooFXNDtCBzmYBdRS2HBdDLNR5ZQ/view?usp=sharing

When replacing bigger amounts of assets I export directly into the game folder though i have to reopen the project then. (I am not aware of a way to force reimport all assets that changed.)
This doe lead to issues of assets not being updated in the editor. though its fine in the preview.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15uDfIZjRMpJEVtrOukiLpqZlJt68_KUp/view?usp=sharing

Sorry for my confusion in the second vid.
I hope that helps.

[Luni]

Hey @DasBilligeAlien
Thank you for the time that you took to record these videos, and don’t worry about the confusion

Allow me to ask a couple of follow-up questions to make sure that I understand the way you work with asset animations.

For the first example (Replacing animations in a “simple” way): I assume that you don’t have any particular interest on keeping the collision masks on those cases. Do you every have the need to replace animation frames with personalised collision masks? If yes, how do you do it?

For the second example: Could you clarify what do you mean to “a way to force reimport all assets that changed” as well as the issues that you’re describing (and that do not appear on the video)?
I did notice that when you dragged the new animations to the local Project folder -and in order for the “new” animations to replace the “old” animations- the names are the exact same (so Windows can “over write” the files). Can you elaborate on the inconvenients of working like this?

Thanks!

[DasBilligeAlien]

@Luni

For the first example (Replacing animations in a “simple” way): I assume that you don’t have any particular interest on keeping the collision masks on those cases. Do you every have the need to replace animation frames with personalised collision masks? If yes, how do you do it?

Absolutely. Its a case of replacing basically anything. Images, amount of frames, collision masks. Often enough in that case the shape of the images change enough to remake the collision masks anyway.
Bur frankly I completely forgot the collision masks in this case! Which might be an indicator for some kind of prompt asking to update collision masks automatically or by hand.
My games are simple enough that manually updating masks ever time is no issue.

@Luni

For the second example: Could you clarify what do you mean to “a way to force reimport all assets that changed” as well as the issues that you’re describing (and that do not appear on the video)?

As an example Unity updates automatically every time a file in the project folder is replaced. The editor then reloads the assets instantly and the new version is immediately available for use in the engine.

GDevelop does not do this. Instead I have to close the project in the editor and then open it again for the files to update in the editor (I am not aware of a better method, i might be missing something obvious). That is doable with small projects like mine, but feels clunky and a bit weird, also produces unwanted behaviour

• A feature to reimport changed files automatically -or-
• A feature that reloads changed assets after pressing a button

Commentary on the Video on this:

• 0:15 you can see that the images are not updated in the editor but show the correct colour in the preview (i should have used an more obvious colour change)
• 0:35 I try to indicate with the mouse that images are still red
• 0:40 I close the project and reopen it.
• 0:50 we can see that the editor shows the creature still as red, but the icon in the asset list in the outliner changed to purple.
• 1:00 switching to a different scene the outliner shows the asset changed to purple as well. (unfortunatly in that scene the asset is not visible in the editor view so I don’t know if it would have updated)

@Luni

I did notice that when you dragged the new animations to the local Project folder -and in order for the “new” animations to replace the “old” animations- the names are the exact same (so Windows can “over write” the files). Can you elaborate on the inconvenients of working like this?

I cut out quite a bit of the process. In hindsight that was a bad idea. I should have shown the full process.
But functionally its the same.
I normally work with aseprite, affinity designer, krita or blender. When I update my assets I normally use batch exports directly into the project folder. That means after I changed the colour of the creature, I just pressed export in aseprite and its replacing the images in the project folder (basically like in the video, just directly by the software i use).
The only issue with that is the aforementioned weirdness that its not correctly updating in the editor.

I hope that helps. If not, I can try to make a clearer video with better commentary.

[AntonioNero]

Hi, Luni.

I cannot make a video of a exist the feature. I hope you can accept my request, anyway.

I’m asking for a feature that permits to drag a sprite between animations. E.g. drag one or more sprites from Animation #0 to Animation #1.

[Luni]

Hey Antonio
Sure thing I will accept your comment!
Adding a new frame between 2 frames, and dragging frames to replace them on the timeline is on my scope of things to design.

The reason why I’m asking for videos is because there are little things that I can guess are important but my experience is not everyone’s experience.
I could use a “simple” way to do so, but advanced or “power users” with more than 10 frames would need to know other things that I cannot imagine or consider with my humble use of animation frames.
Thanks to this topic I’m witnessing the different ways that creators work on their games so I can resolve and design for the needs of those who participate.

Feel free to send the video through Bubbles and in English, Spanish, French or Portuguese (I could understand slow Italian too) whenever you’re ready and if you’d like to participate. I’d love to hear your input too.