2D Animation Tools

Use case

To create animation data that can be easily controlled by the authors of the sprite sheets; i.e. determining the dimensions of the sheet and length of animation. This allowed us to create smoother sprite animation blending, create triggers for animation driven events like foot step audio on the frame the foot touches the floor and the collider spawns for an attack.

Setting up an animation

I wanted to make it simple to implement animations that were linked to files in the tool and then pushed to the games workbed alongside the animation data ready for use in the game.

As well as supporting realtime animation editing, so that  the animation runs whilst being edited to ensure that the desired outcome was created.

Blending

The tool supported different view modes for blending. Showing either the final spliced timeline or a stack showing the user how the two animations will be spliced together.

Events

One other feature was the inclusion of animation driven event triggers, that could be created and mapped to animation frames so that we could trigger in game behaviours from the events. The simple interface made this really simple to use and keep up-to-date by both programmers and the animation sheet authors.