Animation Editor

1.1 - Menu Bar

The options in wadmerger are stored in 2 places: the menu bar and the toolbar. The most important ones are in the toolbar, the other ones in the menu. Some options from the menu have hotkeys. A full list of all menu commands is shown below. If more information about an action is available, the title is a link.

1.2 - Toolbar

The toolbar contains the most used options of the animation editor. All buttons are listed below. If more information is available, there is a link included.

	Move object (if animation is selected) or move mesh (if no animation selected)
	Rotate selected mesh.
	Auto rotate on/off.
	Auto animate on/off.
	Reset the camera to the default position.
	Start the Animation Wizard.
	Add a new frame.
	Delete current frame.
	Open Anim Command editor.
	Open State Change editor.

1.3 - Objects

The objects frame is used to work with multiple objects in the same window. For the moment this is only useable for the jeep, in the future you might be able to see how lara uses a kickdoor or key_hole this way. From the drop down menu you can select an object. If you are for example editing the VEHILE_EXTRA object, you should be able to select the JEEP from this menu. The boxes on the left are disables for now, in the future you can use them to select which moveable you are editing.

1.4 - Render options

In the render options are some objects that effect the way OpenGL handles the moveable. On the left are 2 buttons below each other named Model and Animation. When this mode is enabled, you can right click on a mesh to select it. For more about the animation mode, see chapter 2 - Animating objects.
If you check animation, which is the default value, you are be able to select meshes using the mouse. If you select Model, you can select faces on the model and change their textures. For more about this mode, see chapter 5 - Editing textures

1.5 - Render window

The render window is the most important part of the animation editor. It shows you the model and you also use it to place textures, move the meshes or make the animations.  To give you a good view of the model, a camera view is included which allows you  take a look at all sides of the model. You can enable auto rotate in the toolbar to make the object rotate itself slowly, or you can use the manual camera mode using the mouse:
Right mouse button: Rotate around X and Y axis
Right mouse button + control: Rotate around Z axis
Right mouse button + shift: Move object in X and Y direction
Right mouse button + alt: Zoom in/out to object
You can also use the mouse in the 3D window to edit the animations or to texture the model. For more details about these features, see chapter 2 - Animating objects and chapter 5 - Editing textures.

1.6 - Textures

All textures of the current model are shown in the textures frame, next to the render window. The textures are separated from each other and placed on a white/gray background. This is done to avoid textures being not visible because of the background. The textures can be selected by clicking on them with the left mouse button. A red frame is places around the selected texture. There is also a green triangle on it showing which part is visible if you place this texture on a triangle. This triangle is places in the side of the texture you clicked. If you click in the right bottom part of the texture, the triangle is placed there.

1.7 - Animation

In the animation frame you can select the current animation and frame. You can also edit some options of the selected animation or set how to play the animation in auto mode.
In the current animation drop down menu you can select which animation is currently shown in the render window. If you select no animation in this box, you are be able to edit the mesh tree. If you want to make a new animation, there is a new button below this animation. If you click it, a new animation is added after the last one.
On the right side of this frame is a list of options. The StateID, NextAnimation and NextFrame are explained in chapter 3 - Effects & AI. The other fields are explained in chapter 4 - Advanced animations.

1.8 - Meshes

The meshes frame is for controlling meshes. You can see which mesh is selected or change the selected mesh. There is also a button MeshTree Editor. This can be used to add meshes to your object or to delete meshes. This is explained in chapter 4 - Advanced animations.

1.9 - Status bar

The status bar does not contain any options. It contains, as the name says, the status of the animation editor. Currently there are 3 values shown there: the number of frames rendered per second in the render window, the number of faces that are rendered and the memory that is used by the object, undo buffer and some other data needed by animedit. This does not include the memory OpenGL uses to story the textures or to render the model.

In order to edit animation, you must check the Animation button in the render options. Now you are be able to animate the meshes. This might look hard, but you can learn it fast. If you are new to making animations, read the what to animate section below. It will tell you what you can and what you can't. If you want to start directly, go to the rotating meshes section. If you are already well in animating, you should go directly to chapter 3 - Effects & AI - to learn how to connect animations or add effects to them.

If you are new to making animations, you might think (hope?) that you can make lara talk, close her eyes or move her fingers. This is a possibility, but it's not so easy. Here we got rule 1: You can only animate full meshes. A mesh is a collection of faces (triangles or rectangles) of which objects are made. A mesh is static and cannot change. A mesh which is in a wad file will stay the same. It's not possible to change the textures of it or to move rectangles inside a mesh.
This brings us to rule 2: Meshes can only rotate around it's origin. Meshes cannot move relative to each other in an animation. Once meshes are places in position, they cannot change. Each mesh can be rotated around it's origin point. This is the 0,0,0 point, the start of 3D space. This is usually the point where objects are connected with each other. The origin is shown if you are rotating a mesh with 3 colored lines.
Meshes are connected with these other. These connections are set once, and cannot change within an animation. These connections are mostly logical connections, like the feet to the bottom part of the leg, the bottom leg to the top part and the top part to the hips. Meshes are rotated together, so if the hips are rotated, the legs will rotate and the feet too. This works in one direction only, so if you rotate the feet, the hips won't rotate. This is done by the pop and push commands, but that is explained is the advanced sections.
From now one, you should know enough of the how it works, it's time to start animating!

Without rotations, you can't make animations. Before you can start rotating, you must have a frame in your render window. First select an animation from the drop down menu, and then a frame from the slider below it. Make sure auto animate is disabled in the toolbar, that option is only to view animations.
When you got a frame rendered in the render window, you must chose a mesh to rotate. Right click on the mesh to select it or select one from the drop down menu in the meshes frame. Then hit the rotate button in the toolbar. This will pop up the rotate window, which is shown on the left here. It will also show 3 lines coming from the origin. On the end of each line is a colored sphere.
The colors of these lines are also visible in the rotate window.  Each color is for another axis: red for x, green for y and blue for z. The lines show the direction of these axis. By clicking the colored spheres, the mesh will rotate around the line with the same color.
You can also rotate using the rotate window. This window has 2 buttons on the top: Rel and Abs. These stand for Relative and Absolute. In absolute mode, the 3 fields (X,Y,Z) are filled with the rotations of this mesh in full degrees (0-359). You can change these values in the text boxes. If you click the Ok button, they are updated in the render window.
In relative mode you also use degrees, but now the values shown in the boxes are all 0. You put a value in it and when you press the Ok button, they are added to the absolute values. For example, if the absolute values are (0,60,90) and you put (0,10,-20) in the relative box, the new values will be (0,70,70).

A single rotation is not yet a full animation. Mostly you need to rotate a lot of meshes. And then you need to make another frame. Because mostly the next frame is based on the current one, you should copy and paste it. If you want a fully new animation, you better start with just 1 frame. Then use copy (Ctrl+C) and paste insert (Ctrl+I). Then you can start editing the next frame. Some animations work in a loop (after the last one the first one come), but you can also direct an animation to another one (make lara stand after the animation).

If you are new to the animation editor, I advise you to stop reading now and try to make a simple animation. Best way is to use the pistol_anim object. Just try to make lara hold the guns different. It's not a big masterpiece, but you must begin somewhere. If you try to learn everything at once, you have forgotten the basics when you are done reading.

You can't move a single in the animation editor, but you can move all meshes at once. To do this, first select an animation and frame. Then hit the move button in the toolbar. The whole object will be selected now and the same colored lines with circles will show up, but are now larger. Use the circles to move the object in X,Y or Z direction. You can also use the move window to move the object. The values used here are in sectors, so a value of 1 means the objects moves a full sector.

In the menubar there is a menu called frame. You can use the options in this menu to copy and paste frames. The copy button will place the current frame in the memory. This will store the rotations for all meshes and the position of the object. You can use the paste (replace) button will replace the current frame with the copied one. The paste (insert) button will insert the copied frame after the current frame.
In the frame menu there are 3 more options below copy/paste: delete all frames, set rotation for all frames and set position for all frames. The names might say what they do. Delete all frames will remove all frames (except 1) from the current animation. Set rotation for all frames will set the rotation of the current mesh the same in all frames. It will take the rotations from the current frame. Finally the set position for all frames makes the position of all frames in this animation the same. It will take the posisions from the current frame.

There are also some options for working with frames in the toolbar. There are 3 buttons in here, which are located in the 3rd part of the toolbar (each part is seperated with a vertical line). The first button, anim wizard, is explained in 2.5. The other 2 buttons work very easy.
The second button means add frame. This will add a frame after the current one. The rotations of this new frame are copied from the current one.
The third button means delete frame. This will remove the current frame from the animation.

Sometimes there are simple animations that need a lot of frames. For these animations there is an animation wizard. You can find it in the toolbar. Clicking this button opens a new window. The wizard has 4 steps. After each step you click the next button. The first step is an introduction.
In step 2 you are asked to make the starting frame. You do this in the render window. You can rotate the meshes the same way as when editing a normal frame.
When you are done, go to step 3. Here you are asked to make the last frame. Create the frame the same way as you did in step 2.
In step 4 you are asked how long the animation must be. Enter the number of frames the animation takes in it. It must be at least 3, else it has no use to use the anim wizard. In the second box enter a frame number where this animation will start. The new created animation is added to the current animation, it won't replace exist frames. Entering a value of 0 in the start box means the animation starts at the beginning of the animation.
When you click next after step 4, anim edit will calculate the frames between the first and last one you builded.

Animations are not only rotations. Rotations might be very important, the state changes are just as important. Effects might look a bit more advanced, but they are also important. Or do you like enemies that can't die or make sounds?

An object that plays an animation is nice, but most objects have more animations. They need to be connected with each other. This is done using the NextAnimation and NextFrame. These values appear in the animation (see 1.7 - Animations) and in the state changes. The values in the animation are used when after the last frame has played. Then the game will switch to the animation and frame which is in there. Mostly NextFrame is set to 0, which means the animation will start at the first frame.

Objects in Tomb Raider were getting better in each game. Enemies have improved a lot in tr4 compared to tr1. These improvements can be seen if you look at the animations. In tr1 there were human enemies that had just 15 animations, in tr4 it is about twice as much. And the game engine that controls these enemies hasn't changed much.
It's not the game that controls the enemies, it's the state changes. The game is yet again the stupid part of the enemy that does nothing else then sending silly numbers to the enemy. For example, the game engine calculates the distance between lara and a sas. If this is more then 10 sectors, it sends a signal 3 to the sas. When the sas is near lara (so he can shoot her), the game sends 12. When lara runs away he sends '3' again.
The enemy itself converts these codes and make the enemy run if the signal is 3 and fire if the signal is 12. You, as animator, can do whatever you want with these signals. You have full control on it, so you can make enemies keep shooting even if the game sends 3. This is done using state changes.

An object can be in several states. These states are different for each enemy, so I included a list in chapter 6 - Reference. You are be able to use any code you want in an enemy, but in order to make a normal enemy, you need to know which codes the game uses for that enemy. The game uses 2 stateids: one internal, sent from game to enemy, which is based on the position of the enemy, position of lara, the map, etc. The second stateid is used from the animation and is the one of the current playing animation. These are compared with each other. If they are the same, the animation will continue to play. But if they are different, the enemy takes a look at the state changes.
The enemy searches though the list of state changes of the current animation until it finds one that has the same stateid as the game sent. Then it checks the low and high frame value in the state change. The current playing frame must be in the range of these values. If it's lower then the low frame or higher then the high frame, the enemy continues to the next state change. If it's the same, it switches the current animation and frame to the one in the state change.

There are 5 values for a state change. It might look hard, but if you put these values in the following rule it looks easier:
If stateid sent by game is <StateID> and the current frame is not lower then <Low Frame> and not higher then <High Frame> then switch animation to <Next Animation> and frame to <Next Frame>.
The game does that for every state change. For an example, take the state changes on the left. There are 3 state changes in it. The game sends stateid 9 and the current frame is 15. The first 2 won't be used cause the stateid is not the same. The last one also won't be used cause the current frame is lower then 16. The animation will continue. But the game keeps sending stateid 9. So the enemy does the same. This time the current frame is 16 so the last one is valid. The animation is set to 0 and the next frame to 18. If the state id of animation 0 is also 9, the enemy is happy and won't use the state change anymore. However, if animation 0 has state change 10 and the game wants 9, it will call the state changes of animation 0.

With rotations and state changes you can make animations. But with animcommands you can do more. You can move objects with it, play sounds, and add effects. Anim commands are set on an animation, but mostly they effect just a single frame. You can view the anim commands of an animation by clicking the anim command button in the toolbar. The AnimCommands window, as shown on the left here, will show up. It contains a list of all commands. If you select one, it will show up in the 4 boxes below. Not all boxes are used for each type of command. The first one always exists. Here you can select the type of command. There are 6 different ones. If you select another command here, the other 3 boxes might change.
There are 3 buttons below these boxes: Add, Delete and Change. The add button will add the command which is in the 4 boxes to the list. The delete button will remove the selected command from the list and the change button will replace the selected command by the one in the 4 boxes.

Most anim commands are self explaining, but here is a list of them anyway:

Sounds can be used in objects using animcommands. If you select Play Sound anim command, you see a drop down menu from which you can select sounds. Only sounds that are attatched to the current object are shown here. You can attatch sounds by selecting Add Sound from the Sounds menu.

There are more features then just rotating, state changes and anim commands. These features allow you to change the layout of meshes or even add new meshes.

Moving meshes is not a hard job, it's even easier then rotating them. But it's in the advanced section because it's a risky job. Moving meshes will effect all animations of an object and because of that reason it can only be done when no animation is selected. In the animation frame select no animation from the drop down menu. Now you can select a mesh and click the move button in the toolbar. You will see a move window and the 3 colored lines with circles at the end. You can use these the same way as rotating, except that you now put coordinated in the move window. These coordinates are in full sectors. A sector, like in trle, is 1x1. The height (Y) is in the same dimension. In trle you use clicks and blocks. 4 clicks is 1 sector, so raising Y with 1 means it's 4 clicks high.

Using the speed and accel options you can make objects move in an animation. You can also use objects using anim commands, but that happens after the animation is completed. With the speed and accel objects move with a constant speed per frame. I'm not sure what the scale is, but I think it's in world coordinates. In world coordinates a sector is 1024 and a click is 256. The object can only move forward this way.
When an animation starts the speed is taken from the speed field. Every frame the value in the accel field is added to the speed. Positive acceleration values incree the speed, negative number slow the object down.

The animation editor has a simple build in texture editor. To activate it, you must check the Model button in the render options. Then you are be able to select faces in the render window. The following actions are included. They all work by clicking a face:

If you want to place a texture, you must select one first from the textures frame. The textures frame works the same as in TRLE, except that you can't select a part of a texture. If you texture a rectangular face, the whole texture is placed on it. If you texture a triangular face, only the part between the green lines is placed on it. You can select this part the same way as in TRLE, by clicking in the corner you want.

When making enemies, you need to know the states of it. In this reference are the full lists of animations of some enemies. The lists have the same layout. In the first column is the animation number and a small description of that enemy. The second one contains the stateid.
The descriptions are mostly very short. If there is a -> in the middle of the description, it means this animation is used for switching to another state. Like Run -> Walk means the enemy was running in this animation, but goes walking after this animation. This animation is called by a state change in the Run animation. When it's done playing, it will call the Walk animation by using the NextAnimation.
There are object that have UNUSED fields in it. This does not mean they are not used by the game, they are only not used in the objects I used to make these lists. Maybe hidden features can be used here.
Some animations got a number after it. This mostly means there are more animations that do the same. For example, the hammerhead enemy has 2 times a slow attack animation. Mostly each of these anim has it's own attack animation, so it's the game engine that chooses one. But it can also be selected by state changes. If an enemy is in frame 1 when he wants to attack he used attack 1, if he is in frame 10 he uses attack 2.
Finally there are some animations with (part 1), (part 2) or (part 3) behind the name. This means the animation has multiple parts. You normally call part 1 of the animation. Then part 1 calls part 2 and part 2 calls part 3.

The lists have an order of animations in it, but mostly you can change the order if you want to. Because most animations are called by state changes, you can make any order you want. But there are some exceptions. The game engine does not use state changes when an enemy dies. The die animation must be on the same place or it won't work. Also the climb and flash grenades animations are done by the game. They must be on the same place or it might crash the enemy. And finally the game also does not use state changes when an enemy is triggered. If no ocb code is used, the enemy will start in the standing animation. With ocb codes this can be a different animation, which you can find in the trle manual. Make sure these animations are in the correct place as shown in these lists.