Animation changing and skipped frames.

This is an old problem that's always been around, I think.

It's that when you change between animations during play, MMF often, not always, skips the first frame of the animation. Like if I had an attack animation with a picture for reaching far out, then less far, then back to normal stopped frame, sometimes it skips the first, far-reaching frame so the animation loses impact. Often you can still see the frame flash by though, but then at a faster rate than the other frames play.

I'm just asking, will this ever be fixed?

Also, will we in the future be able to set speeds to individual frames like how GIFs usually work? Because right now, if you want a frame to last longer, you need duplicates of the same frame. :(

If you want more control over the animation, you can change frames manually. That way, you can change frame after a certain period of time, instead of using duplicates of the same frame.

That technically costs me more, the code would be huge, even if it's not for every animation. And add to this global events not working with qualifiers, so I have to duplicate the code each frame.

Sorry, that last part is not on topic.

I can confirm the frame skip problem. It's actually never skipped, but the time it will be displayed is completely random.

Here is an example file which I posted earlier.

I've had a lot of trouble with this bug, since my animations are short, and it's very important that every frame is seen. I always put an extra frame in the beginning of each animation (so frame 1 and 2 is identical), to ensure that it's seen. It's not a good way to do it, but it's the easiest way to get around the bug.

Ah yes, I see the frameskip issue.

Shouldn't more people have suffered by this, I wonder? Like, alot.

From what I hear the animation is based on an "Every" loop rather than a "Restrict for" loop

I havent experienced this, but i do use only simple animations where the first frame is not important.

I've always dealt with it too, I usually have to double the first frame, that's not always a good option though :/

First frame is randomly skipped for me, too. I had to double the first frame on my animation, which sometimes makes it appear too long.

I don't care if this is a necro post. Has this issue been fixed?? I am still experiencing it on the latest build of Clickteam 2.5. Does anyone have a solution? I always thought it was related to me being crappy at animating but whenever I would bring my animations into MMF they would be slightly off. This would appear to be the reason for that.

If possible I would be satisfied just reading the gif file I animated from. That way it can maintain the exact timing I planned for it. Is that possible?

Thanks!

I'm having this problem. I think I know what it is and there is a solution, but the propblem is wading through the tutorials. The common sense keywords will not find it. The thing is, Animation frames start at 0 and string paragraphs start at 1. Because of this, when you do the
Always = set animation frame (object) to Alterable value A,
Increase and decrease alterable value A to change frames.
Gives me errors, there's a calculation, but I can't figure it or find it. :( If indeed this is the issue.

"if you want a frame to last longer, you need duplicates of the same frame"
I actually do like this if I have an animation with speed 25 for example. "Animation frame =0 -> set speed to 2" and if "Animation frame =1 set speed to 25"(If you want the first frame to have low speed)...that way I don't need to duplicate frames...there will be a few extra conditions of course but....I'd love to be able to set individual frame speeds within the animation editor too though.

I too have noticed this. I just duplicate the first frame, usually it's not a problem.

I had trouble with this a while ago. I think the nature of the animation I was having trouble with meant I could just double up the first frame to get around it but I appreciate that sometimes this is not ideal. I don't think I came up with a good fix but the last post in the link above might help.

Have you guys ever noticed how it only happens the second time and beyond? But the first time is fine?

Playing around for a couple hours, I think the bug occurs when an animation ends and goes back to the first animation, "stopped" on its own. So, don't let them - either loop them or force stop them.

CoffeeCup, if you want "stopped" to be idle, like in your example in the other thread, add a bunk frame to the end of the animation you're switching to.

User Clicks Object:
-> Change animation to Animation 12
-> Start Animation

Animation 12 is playing
+ Current frame of object is 3:
-> Change Animation to Stopped
-> Stop Animation


You can also avoid stopping and restarting the animation by setting your idle "stopped" animation to 0 speed and looping it.

Wow thanks for posting all these possible solutions! For me what would be ideal is just to insert a gif with the speed and timing I've already determined is appropriate for the animation. It's nonsense that I have to retime it in the engine.

Anyway, I'm going to try all of these and report back with my findings. It would be nice to hear from a click team developer on this issue.

If you're talking about putting a bunch of gif frames in one mmf2 animation frame, I could see weird things happening with little control. How would you stop the animation? mmf2 says "stop on frame 2" but your entire gif is on frame 2, so it would keep looping.

Or, if you want them to be spread out in their own frames, I think it won't allow this because mmf2 doesn't allow the user to change speeds between frames, whereas with gifs you can. So mmf2 would need to repeat frames to compensate for the differences in times, which depending on your lowest common denominator, could result in hundreds of repeat animation frames.

Imagine your gif was:

Frame 1 (332 ms), Frame 2 (443 ms), Frame 3 (211 ms)

How would fusion do this?

I personally think it's good enough that mmf2 brings in the animation one frame at a time and just don't bother animating until everything is in mmf2.

The animation extension (the little video camera icon) has an option to insert animated gifs but it's not very well optimized. It does take the .gif and display it as is but it tends to hitch when it changes files. I would assume it is possible to hold the frames or play them as is even at 60fps. I understand that it would be quite difficult if not impossible to play an animation that has variable time data in each of it's frames.

**update** I found that using the animation extension takes the first frames time data and applies it to every other frame so yeah it would seem it's not possible to have variable times.

Also I animate outside of MMF using other animation based programs because they are built for animation.

Oh sure, it's an interesting idea. It would be really useful to have Pivot do all the legwork for the game I'm working on, but at least I can have multiple animations for the same object. It could make for an awesome extension, but I'm not holding my breath.

You get the animation frame problem fixed? The more I look at it, the more I think I've got it figured.

Let's say your animation "stopped" is at 30 speed. Now imagine 25 frames of your speed have gone by and you change the animation to "walking." I think at this point, the animation goes to the first frame of "walking," but it stays at 25 frames. If the speed of "walking" is 20, it'll jump to frame 2.

Now imagine if in "stopped," only 5 frames have gone by. Now when you change the animation to "walking," it still has 15 to go with a 20 speed, so it stays on frame 1.

I'd like it if an admin or something cleared this up, but the solution still seems to be to stop the animations that you don't want to loop. Don't ever let an animation stop on it's own. This is actually better for the example because I noticed the first click in my previous example, the speed is slightly off:

Animation "Stopped" is playing:
-> Stop animation

User clicks on object:
-> Change animation to 12
-> Start animation

Animation 12 is playing
+ Current frame is 3
-> Change animation to stopped

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ziplock

CoffeeCup, if you want "stopped" to be idle, like in your example in the other thread, add a bunk frame to the end of the animation you're switching to.

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Thanks Ziplock; I've just had a look at your example and it looks like you've solved the problem. I'll have a bit more of a detailed look at this some time but I think you've done it!