Is there a better/cleaner way to handle Mob model animations?

[gummby8 26]

In the continued pursuit to become a better programer, this is half a question about knowing more about fancy tricks in java and half pertaining to Forge / MC

 

I have mob models that perform animations based on their AI. I use a sort of keyframe system to determine the position and rotation of the model parts. 

 

Since there is only 1 model for every instance of that monster, if I ever move a part in one animation, I have to specify how that part moves in every animation for that monster.

 

So now I have to specify an array of "KeyFrame" objects for each part. and then specify the position and rotation for each KeyFrame in the array

 

So for instance, If I have the head of the mob move during an animation it goes as follows

 

	static final KeyFrame[] KF_Howl_HEAD = new KeyFrame[4];

	//KeyFrame(int frame, float posX, float posY, float posZ, float rotX, float rotY, float rotZ)
    
	public void build_howl() {
    	KF_Howl_HEAD[0] = new KeyFrame(0, 0, 3, -45, -10, 0, 0);
    	KF_Howl_HEAD[1] = new KeyFrame(5, 0, 3, -45, -40, 0, 0);
    	KF_Howl_HEAD[2] = new KeyFrame(35, 0, 3, -45, -40, 0, 0);
    	KF_Howl_HEAD[3] = new KeyFrame(45, 0, 3, -45, -10, 0, 0);
	}

    public void howl(int frame, float partialTick){
    	ModelUtils.moveParts(frame, HEAD, KF_Howl_HEAD, partialTick);
	}

 

Now that is just to move the head. To have 1 animation that moves a dozen parts, it gets a pretty bulky initializing KeyFrame arrays for each part, for each animation and then building out each individual keyframe based on position and rotation.

Here is a model with 5 animations that ends up with more than 1000 lines of code

https://github.com/gummby8/ModularBosses/blob/104602a9d162ee8a14414be61f8ba3d46aee006b/main/java/com/Splosions/ModularBosses/client/models/entity/ModelGolem.javaL279

 

My question is, is this the cleanest way of doing this, or is there a more advanced/better way?

 

Thank you,

 

 

Edited October 20, 2017 by gummby8

[jabelar 591]

I'm a big fan of keyframe method. That is basically the way movie animators have always done complex animations. I see a lot of people trying to use math because vanilla models use it, but that only works because the vanilla models are very simple (whole arm one block, etc.) and cyclical unrealistic movement is accepted.

 

I have a tutorial on complex entity animations and it is similar idea to yours (I use arrays for my keyframes). You might want to check out my tutorial here: http://jabelarminecraft.blogspot.com/p/introduction-first-of-all-to-understand.html

 

The most important thing is to make sure you have the child parent relationships set up properly. Then you can combine motions easily.

 

The only improvement I made was that you can also implement a "tweening" system. In other words, you can specify that you want to move between two key frames over a certain number of ticks, and the in-between angles are calculated for you. It is really easy to do this linearly (just divide the difference by number of ticks) but it can look a bit robotic so for even more realistic movement you can add some other tweening math to smooth out the transitions (basically a Bezier type fit).

 

If you perfect the tweening system, you can usually define complex animations with just a handful of key frames.

 

In the end though animation is painstaking work -- even the movie folks have to move each joint, each facial expression to really get it the way they want. At some point you simply have to define all the angles and positions and an array is as simple as it gets for that.