Animation interpolation

[Sean Mirrsen]

Or whatever it's called.

I know OTA units have their scripts smoothed out by detecting series of move..now and turn..now commands followed by a sleep command, and making smooth animations based on those. The question is: how do I make it work on my own units? I simply need to sync together a lot of motion for my 6-legged Drone units, and it would be a lot easier through the use of sleep-delimited animation frames.

[Buggi]

methinks animation should be more bone-based than object based, but that's an INSANE amount of work.

*/methinks*

[RightField]

As far as I know, the interpolation is automatic. Just script it like you would script a normal TA unit, and it will smoothen out.

[Sean Mirrsen]

That's the problem - it isn't! I tried to experiment, made a simple framed animation - and the frames remained as frames, no interpolation whatsoever. Maybe they only are interpolated in specific scripts? I'll try it later.

[Fnordia]

There's no specific script checking for the interpolation, it is done for every script. I can take a look at your script and see if there's anything that could cause it to not interpolate if you want.

[zwzsg]

I'm scared that doing that interpolation for every units will mess many carefully crafted scripts.

What exactly is that interpolation thing doing? How does it ensure its changes are harmless?

[Fnordia]

It basically works like this: When a move-now or a turn-now command is detected, it is saved to a list of delayed animations, instead of updating the piece coordinates directly. When the script is finished, if the script finished because of a call to sleep with a 30 < sleeptime < 300, these delayed animations are translated into interpolated ones for the duration of the sleep. Otherwise the values are updated directly.

The following checks are made to make sure these interpolatations are transparent: If a move/turn on the same piece and axis is done later during the same tick, the delayed animation is commited first. Also, an interpolation is not allowed to overwrite a turn or move in progress (unless it originated from a previous interpolation), if one is running the values are updated directly instead.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Ah, I see. That's what the problem is. My scripts are usually slower than that, using about 500 microseconds per frame. Can you change that in the code, so that it is more flexible?