kmoon11's Recent Forum Activity

  • Basically, the Construct API requirements to allow the Creature plugin to be usable by Construct users are:

    • Ability to render a triangulated mesh ( Points, Indices, UVs ) efficiently. Creature excels at high resolution meshes so rendering meshes as degenerate quads is not ideal. Performance is key.
    • Ability to access the character asset data ( JSON or binary ) in editor and render its rest pose in the editor session.

    Both of those features I do not know how to implement right now in the current Construct SDK/API. Perhaps I am missing something here but some assistance/guidance on what can be done will be fully appreciated.

    Btw, in Creature you can now take a 3D mesh, convert it into a 2D animated character and light it in realtime 3D:

    "https://youtu.be/yRLn82jAzbM"

    There are a ton of super exciting features planned moving into 2018, the goal as you probably already know is to make Creature the most advanced 2D animation tool out there. Most Creature users love it for the ability to easily author complex animated movement: cloth fluttering in the wind, flesh/muscle effects, automated self-walking and more. It will be fantastic if I could bring all this power of the tool onto Construct, just like how it is already available in other game engines ( UE4, Unity, PhaserJS, PixiJS, Godot etc. )

    Thanks

  • I really, really would so much prefer Spriter and Spine to not implement themselves as drawing plugins. This forces the plugin to reimplement a bunch of Construct features and actually limits other creative features too. For example:

    - you can't add a WebGL shader to just one part of a skeletal animation if the plugin draws the whole thing, but you can if it just controls sprite objects (e.g. make just the head flash red if hit, etc)

    - you can't test for collisions with just a segment of a skeletal animation if the plugin draws the whole thing, but you can if it just controls sprite objects

    - a plugin which draws the whole animation probably has to reinvent a whole asset management pipeline, but if it just controls sprites it leverages our project-wide in-editor spritesheeting engine

    - Construct's support for containers allows you to treat composite objects as if they were one instance in the events

    Personally I am convinced that these plugins should not use the drawing APIs and should simply act as controllers for sprites. This makes it much more flexible for the user, and avoids clunky reinventions of existing parts of Construct. I discussed this at length with a Spine developer a while ago and I thought they agreed; one of the outcomes of that discussion was the decision provide a custom import process so they can conveniently generate all the necessary sprites on import, so I filed this issue as a TODO for that work. Perhaps not all the Spine developers are aware of this approach.

    We could add the drawing APIs they want, but one of the reasons we're holding off is because those features don't work in the canvas2d renderer. From the user's point of view, this will manifest as the plugin randomly not working on a small percentage of devices. I intend to make the C3 runtime the point where we unilaterally drop the canvas2d renderer, at which point we can go to town with these kinds of features. However even then it has the drawbacks listed above, and the C3 runtime is still some way off.

    Rather than adding new drawing APIs, I would much rather add any extra APIs to allow them to act as controllers, and have a good workflow for importing and updating. That's why I filed the custom importers TODO issue. I am totally willing to co-operate with any developers who want to take this approach and refine the SDK to make it work well. I can't force them to, and they might make drawing plugins anyway, but I hope at least one of them take me up on this offer!

    Hello,

    Dev of Creature here. Creature is a 100% mesh based 2D deformation animation tool so mesh deformation ( and in particular, high performance per frame mesh deformation ) is key to really leverage its power.

    We also do fancier skeletal mesh deformation beyond simple Linear Blend Skinning to achieve high quality curves/effects.

    Ideally ( just like in almost any other game rendering engine ), we should be able to provide a list of points, indices and uvs and get the resulting mesh rendered out. This is a pretty standard API for any basic rendering pipeline. Rendering triangles as degenerate quads is not ideal even if the performance seems to be acceptable for some situations. Creature excels at high resolution meshes so again, performance is important.

    I really want to support Construct 3 but a lot of the limitations regarding the renderer and what is provided to render simple meshes is lacking. Please let me know what I am missing here in order to achieve the level of visual fidelity on Construct 3 for the Creature animation tool.

    Thanks

  • Hello,

    Yes I am interested in Construct 3 support. However, in general rendering meshes in Construct has been rather non-standard. It will be ideal if Construct could provide actual mesh rendering support so that a preview can be effectively displayed in the editor as well. As of right now, it is difficult so support Construct fully because of its current renderer limitations. If anybody can assist me and pushing this issue forwards that will be great.

    Thanks

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  • Sweet! Thanks Colludium !

    ~Sol

    Hello,

    Yes I have updated the Plugin and it is all checked in on GitHub:

    "https://github.com/kestrelm/Creature_WebGL/tree/master/Construct2"

    Thanks to everybody in the community, especially R0J0hound who made the initial framework all possible.

    Cheers

  • Hello all,

    A newly updated Creature 2D Animation Tool plugin for Construct 2 is out

    To learn about the Creature Animation Tool:

    http://creature.kestrelmoon.com/

    The features include:

    • Animation switching
    • Smooth Animation Transitioning/Blending between source and target clips
    • Skin/Item Swapping
    • High quality Mesh + Skin Bone Deformations ( Creature is a 100% 2D Mesh Based Animation Tool )
    • Anchor Points for characters
    • High performance Point Caching playback
    • Controls for Animation Speed, Looping etc.

    ... and more.

    Please grab the latest Construct 2 plugin from:

    "https://github.com/kestrelm/Creature_WebGL/tree/master/Construct2"

    I welcome feedback from the community, feel free to email me from the website or reply to the forum if you want.

    Cheers

  • Hello mattar128,

    Thanks for your support of Creature! Yes as I said, I am more than happy to work with the Construct community here to bring the Creature Animation Tool into the current ecosystem

    Creature, being a 100% mesh based high performance 2D Animation Tool, will be able to add a huge jump in visual fidelity to any of the games you guys are authoring in Construct!

    I am excited to work with you guys to make it happen, so feel free to send me an email or contact me on the Creature forums.

    Cheers

  • Hello all,

    I am the developer of the Creature Animation Tool.

    I am looking into polishing and enhancing the current Construct 2 plugin if possible ( or a port to Construct 3 )

    The Creature Animation Tool recently added the ability to efficiently do Skin/Item Swapping. That functionality will be available for the JS runtimes when I get the cycles.

    Having said that, I believe there is still quite a bit of work to do to polish up the current Creature Construct 2 runtimes:

    github.com/kestrelm/Creature_WebGL

    I am short on manpower ( having to manage multiple engines and feature sets ). So I am asking if anybody in the community is willing to help out in the porting/polishing of the Creature Construct plugin.

    As an incentive, I will be happy to provide up to 2 FREE Creature Pro Perpetual Windows license keys to any volunteer out there.

    The core functionality of for the Creature runtimes are already written, the work involves exposing those functions properly into the Construct 2/3 framework.

    Please email me ( via the Contact link on the Creature website ) or join my Creature forum and post there if you are interested! Quite a few people have been requesting for a proper Creature Construct 2 runtime so that's why I am posting this here.

    Cheers

  • Hello,

    It would require some work in the JS code to swap out the current texture with a new one to do the skinning you are suggesting. Certainly a do-able task.

    Cheers

    Hello people,

    The first initial version of the Creature Animation Tool Plugin for Construct 2 is now on GitHub.

    Please head over to the "Work in Progress Addons" section for the post.

    Cheers

  • I have done another quick update. Now it basically displays the image atlas as a preview placeholder when you add a new Creature object.

    If anybody knows how to allow me to access the creature project json file in edit time, please let me know. That will allow me to construct a real preview.

    Cheers

  • Ok you should check out the creature forum and youtube page. A new starter tutorial on the Creature Construct 2 plugin has now been posted.

    The video tutorial shows you how to load and switch animation clips in the Creature Construct 2 plugin.

    Cheers

  • R0J0hound Thanks so much for the help, I have credited you in the code for the plugin.

    I have checked in an initial version onto my own GitHub. Please head over to the Creature GitHub page and go to the WebGL section to grab the new Construct 2 runtimes. I have added additional functions to do the following:

    • switchAnimations
    • setAnimationSpeed

    This should be good enough to get started already. Will be recording a short tutorial video soon.

    Cheers

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kmoon11

Member since 22 Dec, 2015

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