Bryan Castillo and Tim Elmer
The Motus Unitatis (μ) Animator Editor allows artists and designers to edit and create short animated clips. With MU, a designer has the ability to place objects at different positions with different rotations at different points in time. When the user plays the sequence, MU will create smooth animations between saved key frames. MU supports both a play mode and a simple editing mode. In addition to editing object position and rotation, users have the ability to edit, and delete keyframes.
μ has two operation modes: Edit Mode and Play Mode. As suggested by the names, edit mode allows the manipulation of items (such as meshes and the playback camera) and keyframes and play mode plays back through keyframes.
Items can be clicked on to select them. Once an item is selected, a manipulator will be displayed at its pivot. The manipulation mode - translation or rotation - can be changed via the UI buttons at the top-left of the screen. Clicking and dragging on an axis of the manipulator will translate or rotate the selected item on that axis.
Any edit made will be saved as a keyframe on the timeline, overwriting any existing keyframe.
The timeline, displayed at the top of the screen, shows each keyframe at its relative position on the timeline. Clicking on a keyframe will jump to that time.
Clicking play will switch to play mode and start playing at the current timecode. To play from the start, hold shift while clicking play.
To return from play mode, click stop. To stop and return to the start of the timeline, hold shift while clicking stop. μ will also automatically stop when the timeline elapses.
Press ‘esc’ to open the console. Commands:
| System | |
|---|---|
| help | Get help. |
| clear | Clear the console. |
| save \ |
Save the animation sequence to a file. |
| load \ |
Load an animation sequence from file. |
| exit | Exit the application. |
| Hierarchy | |
|---|---|
| dump-hierarchy | Dumps info about the scene hierarchy. |
| list | List game objects for editing. |
| Manipulation | |
|---|---|
| manip_mode_set \ |
Set the manipulation mode. |
| select \ | Select a game object for editing. |
| Keyframing | |
|---|---|
| key_ls | List keyframes. |
| key_get \ |
Set the state to the keyframe at timecode, or the interpolated keyframe at timecode. |
| key_set \ |
Set the keyframe at timecode to the current state. |
| key_rem \ |
Remove the keyframe at timecode. |
| Item | Source |
|---|---|
| Font | Montserrat, Julieta Ulanovsky, https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Montserrat |
| Demo Music | Birds Eye View, Joel Evenden / Freeplaynjj, http://www.freeplaymusic.com/volumedetail.aspx?volume=1801 |
| Demo Sound | Jump Sound, snottyboy, http://soundbible.com/1343-Jump.html |
| Demo Sound | Woosh Sound, Mark DiAngelo, http://soundbible.com/2068-Woosh.html |
| Demo Sound | Wooden Thump Sound, Mike Koenig, http://soundbible.com/1086-Wooden-Thump.html |
| Demo Sound | Cupboard Door Close Sound, Caroline Ford, http://soundbible.com/1442-Cupboard-Door-Close.html |
| Demo Sound | Balloon Squeaky Sound, Mike Koenig, http://soundbible.com/1111-Balloon-Squeaky.html |
| Code Library | LightJson, Marcos López C., https://github.com/MarcosLopezC/LightJson (MIT License) |