Vortex

Animation library for unity engine built on top of Playable API.

About

Vortex is an animation library for unity engine built on top of Playable API. FAnimator mono behaviour script is the heart of Vortex. It is the equivalent of the Animator component of unity engine. It plays animations, mixes animations and then plays.

Why Vortex

You can play or mix animation clips or controllers anytime without using animator controllers. You can use animator controllers too if you wish.

Example Usage

Let's say you need a sequence of animations, like this -

1. Play non loop clip A.
2. Start playing controller A and wait 40 seconds.
3. Play non loop Clip B.
4. Mix clip C and D and continue to play for 2 minute.
5. Start playing controller B.

With vortex it is simply calling a set of methods chained with callbacks; all in a single script, in event single method!

And many more to follow!

How to use it

Add FAnimator component to the gameobject that also has an Animator component.

And you are done!

FAnimator settings

• Play Automatically: Is ticked then default clip will be played. If the default clip is not set then the default controller will be played. If it too is not assigned then model will be in T-Pose since no animation will play.
• Update mode: Always to update always. Only Gameobject Active to update only when gameobject is active. Gameobject active and Camera visible to update only when the model gameobject is active and it is being viewed by the camera(inside the camera frustrum).
• Default Clip: Default FAnimationClip.
• Default transition time: In second, it is the default transition time
• Offset start: When ticked, the model will start animating after a certain portion of animation specified by Clip start time offset normalized(of default clip) amount.
• Time Mode: How animation will update with respect to clock.
• Debug Graph: If ticked then the animation graph will be shown in the animation debugger located at Window > Analysis > PlayableGraph Visualizer.
• Preloaded FAnimation Clips: If you can preload FAnimation clips here for optimization. You can also do it for events. If an animation is added here and then if you play Unity Animation clip from script then the FAnimationClip setting you specified here will be used when playing animation.
• Preloaded controllers: Preload controllers for optimization.
• Debug section: to debug all animation state and current animation state.

Animations comes in three forms:

1. Unity Animation clip
2. FAnimation clip
3. Animator controller

FAnimator can play or Mixes and play all three forms of animation data.

FAnimationClip

FAnimationClip works on top of unity Animation clip but with many extra features. For example, the following code will make the fbx model having “FAnimator” (“anim” variable) to animate with “runclip” or simply put the model will start running.

Now let's look at the inspector:

So the run clip is a unity clip named “fasRun” and it is looped. There are other three modes we can incorporate. Speed is 1. We can ignore repetition and looping animation time since the mode is set as “loop”. When the animation is started, “light1” is turned on. The “light1” is turned off when the animation ends. When the animation crosses 45%, the “light2” is turned on.

FAnimators can have four modes in total:

1. Loop
2. Onetime
3. Loop ended with time
4. Play N time

“Looping animation time” is applicable No3 or “loop ended with time” mode. “Repetition” is applicable for No4 or “Play N time” mode. The Start Event or End Event or Middle events can also be accessed with script.

API methods

Followings are the API methods of FAnimator:

• DisableTransition(): If you want no transition then first call this method on the FAnimator object then play or mix animations. You will not have any transition, the animation will play suddenly without any smoothness.
• AbortSequenceIfAny(): If you are already playing a sequence on the FAnimator Object then calling this method will abort the sequence. Sequence is a type of Animation task. More on Animation tasks later.
• MixWithCurrent(): Mix N number of AnimationClip or FAnimationClip or Controllers with currently whatever playing. Then play the mixer.
• MixAndPlay(): Same as MixWithCurrent() but does not mix with currently playing animation data.
• Play(): Plays AnimationClip or FAnimationClip or Controller.
• PlayNormalized(): Same as Play() but for transition time, it uses normalization instead of absolute value. The normalization occurs with respect to animation clip length in conjunction with speed value, the duration.
• PauseAnimation(): Pause animation making it as if the model is frozen in time.
• ResumeAnimation(): Resume animation making it play from the last keyframe it originally was.
• SetAllRunningAnimationToBindPose(): Set model into bind pose effectively playing no animation.
• RunAnimationTask(): Run Animation task on the FAnimator object. More on animation tasks later.

Animation Task

Let us take a look at the following code:

So what is the task’s implementation? For that, let us look at the inspector:

The level designer set it as a “PlaySequence”. PlaySequence is a type of builtin animation task. There are in total six animation tasks built in, for most situations this will suffice but you can of course create your own animation task. Just create a class that does not inherit from UnityEngine.Object(this is by design from unity) and makes it inherit from “IAnimationTask” interface. Of course make the class serializable. And you have made your very own animation task.

Builtin Animation Tasks

Play Animation On Mecanim

Plays an animation that lives inside an animator controller and the animator controller is assigned in the Animator component. This Animator component’s gameobject named “anim”.

• Clip: Animation clip
• Mode: ”Play” for normally playing with normalized start time. If duration is 10 seconds then 0.1 value for “Animation Start Time” means animation will start playing within 1 seconds. “Play In Fixed Time” is the same as “Play” but it starts within “Animation Start Time Fixed” rather than normalized time. CrossFade and CrossFadeWithFixedTime are the counterpart of “Play” vs “Play In Fixed Time”, except cross fade employs an smoothing.
• Layer: The layer on the Animator controller where the animation resides.
• Use Simple: If ticked then the animation will simply play rather than using layer, crossfade, start time etc setting. Equivalent of calling Animator.Play(hash of the clip)

Play Single Animation

Plays a FAnimation clip.

• Clip: Animation clip from FBX or from unity dopesheet
• Normalized start time after: If animation’s duration(with respect to speed) is 10seconds then 0.1 value will make model start fastRun animation within 1 seconds.
• Start time after fixed: Same as previous but does not consider normalization but fixed seconds value
• Is Looped: Should animation be looped or not.
• Speed: Animation speed
• Fresh Play Every time: If ticked then animation will start without any smoothing or blending.

Play Controller

Plays an animator controller.

• Controller: Plays a controller
• Start time: Start within 1.5 seconds as shown in the figure
• Fresh play everytime:

Mix and Play Animations

• Mix with current: Should mix with currently whatever playing?
• Clips: List of animation clips with mixing amount

Mix and Play Controllers

• Controllers: List of controllers with mixing amount

Play Sequence

• Animation Sequence: A list of animation tasks which can contain N number of tasks described above. They will be happen one by one unless somebody call FAnimator’s instance method “AbortSequenceIfAny()”