Custom Animations

Overview

Constance's animation tutorial

Animations for rigged objects in Overgrowth are stored with one of the Phoenix Engine's custom binary file formats, namely the PHXANM (Phoenix Animation) format. To export an animation to a PHXANM (File mask: .anm) file you need to use Wolfire's custom export addon for Blender.

A repackaged version of Blender 2.55 for Windows with the export addon and with the UI set up for this task can be downloaded here. The scripts needed for using Blender 3.4 and above are in the Wolfire Discord's #overgrowth_modding channel, in the pinned messages. Look for a file named phoenixblenderscripts.7z

Exporting an animation

1. Create your custom animation in Blender
2. Set the metadata for your animation in the properties sidebar of the skeleton TODO: ADD IMAGE
   • Click the From Timeline button to set the timeline's start & end frames as the start & end points of your animation; Note: Keyframes outside of this time frame won't be exported.
   • Set the Looping value to 0 if you don't want your animation to loop. Set it to 1 if you want it to loop. Todo: If the value is higher, will it do sth different, like play the animation n times?
3. With the skeleton selected, press File > Export > Phoenix Animation (.anm)

Event Keyframes

Event keyframes are used to tell the game at which moment of an animation an event is going to happen. This is used to trigger attack impacts and footstep sounds among other things. An event is saved as a Custom Property of a bone in the Blender files shipped with the game.

Event Name	Description
event_attackimpact	Will trigger the actual impact while attacking a character
event_attackblocked
event_rightcrouchwalkstep
event_rightrunstep	Will trigger footstepsound, particles and IK ?
event_rightwalkstep
event_rightwallstep
event_golimp
event_grabitem
event_heldweaponswap
event_rightweaponrelease
event_sheatherighthandlefthip
event_sheatherighthandrighthip
event_throatcut
event_unsheatherighthandlefthip
event_unsheatherighthandrighthi

Adding an event Keyframe to your animation

1. Select the 3rd of the rig's layers from the bottom right.TODO: ADD IMAGE The bones should be named DEF-<Bonename>
2. Select the appropriate bone for the event you want to trigger while being in pose mode
3. Set the playhead in the timeline to the moment you want the event to happen
4. In the Properties editor, press Bone and scroll down to Custom Properties
5. Hover over the property that corresponds to the event you want to trigger and press I to add a keyframe. (Value doesn't matter)

Animating Morph Targets

Todo: Add this section