cryTools: CryAnimTools

# CryAnimTools

(CryAnimTools are old and have been replaced with animTools, they still exist and are accessible through the Control Panel. This is mainly for reference and some old tools that were not merged into animTools)

## CryPlantKey

CryPlantKey is one of the first cryTools written, it is used to plant a node (i.e. foot) in a spot specified by the animator for a given number of frames.
Key Type
Here you can set the key type of the keys that are generated. You may choose from any of the three supported Biped key types: Planted, Sliding, or Free. Checking 'Only for existing' will only overwrite the existing keys, if this is unchecked the tool will default to one key per frame.
Begin/End (Set Range)
You can set a range either by entering a numeric range, or by clicking the 'begin' and 'end' buttons to dump the current time into the field.
Use Begin/End - Use Timeline
Upon pressing either of these, the script will run. When 'Use Begin/End' is pressed, the values entered in the Begin/End fields will be used, when pressing 'Use Animation Range', the beginning and ending of the animation range will be used.

## BipedTools

The BipedTools are an extremely user friendly front end to more laborious Biped-related tasks.
Biped Selection
At the top you see this drop down menu where you select the biped you are currently wanting to manipulate. This list is set at the time you open the Animation tools, if you have imported other biped and would like to update/refresh the list, click the arrow: < . (less than)
Bip Motion Menu
This takes you to the motion menu tab for the current biped loaded in the tools.
LoadBIP
An improved (resizable) BIP file requester for loading animations.
Figure Mode / Hide Biped [Toggles]
These two checkbuttons are toggles, meaning that when you press 'Figure Mode' it stays hilighted for the duration that the characte is in figure mode. 'Hide Biped is one of the most used buttons in the entire Aniamtion toolset; it just hides the entire skeleton.
In Place Mode [Toggle]
Clikcing the 'In place Mode' toggle will turn on In Place Mode, which constrains the motion on X and Y, however, pressing 'X or Y will constrain the motion to only the selected axis.
Select Only Biped Bones
Selects the original biped skeleton, and ignores any extra helper bones that have been added. Useful when you want to load up a pose or do some motion panel operation to all the original biped bones. (motion panel biped options will not load if a single non-original biped bone is in the current selection)
Clamp Timeline
This clamps the timeline at the current key, if you click 'At Last Key' it will clamp the timeline at the last keyframe of the currently selected object.
Reverse Animation to FBX Skeleton
This will generate a skeleton with our internal FBX naming convention and it will reverse the current animation onto that skeleton. Just give the script the start and end frames of the animation you would like to reverse.
Attach Biped to FBX Skeleton / Delete FBX Skeleton
This will copy the animation of an imported FBX skeleton with the correct naming convention to the currently loaded biped. 'Delete FBX Skeleton' removes the FBX skeleton.
Collections
This loads Biped pose collections and allows you to manually sync to the latest files from Perforce.
Crysis Rig Navigator
This acts as a synaptic rig element selector, much like what people are used to in Maya, XSI, and MotionBuilder. You can click on part of the rig to select it. When working with multiple bipeds in the same scene, remember to select the biped you want to manipulate at the top of the BipedTools rollout.

## Internal Tools/Fixes

Animation Setup
This drop down menu offers you the choices of none, pistol, rifle, mg, and law. Upon selecting a weapon, it appears in the character's hand
Add Trooper Weapon Bone
This adds a correctly oriented trooper weapon bone into the trooper hierarchy. It was made when Antoine needed to iterate through all trooper animations and add a central weapon bone.
XAF Import/Export
This is an XAF importer/exporter for non human characters. The idea was to save XML Animation files (XAF) for all non human characters like we do BIPs for humans. I implemented it for the trooper, but Animation never used it and it does not work for other characters currently.

## GeneralTools

Change Rotation to TCB
This iterates through all selected objects and changes their rotation controllers to TCB. It really comes in handy when trying to export vehicles into CryEngine as CGAs (all moving parts need to be TCB).
Bake Motion to Keys
Bakes all motion on an object to dense keys (1 key/frame)

## RangeView

This drop down menu is populated by Animator-created 'time-tagged' sequences. It reads in the names and allows you to select individual sequences. When a sequence is selected, the timeline beginning/end is set the the time-tagged range's beginning/ending.

## MirrorArms

When you press 'Mirror' the animation from one arm to the other will be mirrored for the frames currently in the timeline. 'copy/mirror root anim' will also copy the root and reverse it's animation. Keep in mind that you need to be using the Crysis first person arms rig, and also that these newly created keyframes might not tween correctly to other keys outside of the animation range, so you might want to do all keys at once.

## Batch Export

The Batch Exporter was created to manipulate many animations at once, and make sweeping changes in animation data. You can do things like add new procedurally driven bones to a hierarchy then batch export these bones/animation to 3,000 animations. You could also flip every animation 180 deg on the Z axis. The exporter works by loading many BIP animations onto a currently loaded Biped, and exporting them one by one. This makes it very flexible, and allows you to generate sweeping changes to the animation dataset with relative ease.
Specify Modes
The idea was that here you couls specify modes, switching from a BIP batch exporter to an XAF batch exporter. That idea has currently been put on hold, since XAF was not switched to as a standard animation format for non-human characters.
Batch Folder / Save Folder
Here you set the Batch Folder that has trhe BIP files you would like to batch process/export, you also select the Save Folder. Upon selecting the Batch Folder the Export button should enable with the number of bip files there are present to be batched.
Batching Mutliple Folders
If you check the box next to Multiple Folders, the Add to list button should become active. If you press this, your current Batch/Save folders will be saved in a que below (Folders to Process in List:). You can save your que and load old queues you have made.
Generate CAL File
This would generate a CAL file for the animations you were batch exporting, making it easier to test them and also would make it so you did not need to dump those new animations directly into your build. The CAL file system has changed a lot in the past months, so this may no longer work.
Log to File
With this enabled, cryTools will generate a log file to the folder in which you are exporting. Here is an example:
7/20/2006 12:38:22 PM --- Exporting combat_blinded_nw_01
7/20/2006 12:38:30 PM --- Exporting combat_blinded_pistol_01
7/20/2006 12:38:40 PM --- Exporting combat_blinded_rifle_01
7/20/2006 12:38:52 PM --- Exporting combat_callBase_01
Flip on Z Axis
This will flip all exported animation on the Z axis. This was used to convert all out animations from facing -Y direction to +Y direction.
Export RAW CAF Data
This is somewhat deprecated. It used to export RAW CAF animation data, but now we use a different RAW format and compression scheme. This option however, is still here for testing and backwards compatibility.
Save BIP/XAF Files
With this option enabled, the Batch Exporter will also save the BIP file when it exports. If you check 'Only Save, No Export, the Batch Exporter becomes a kind of "Batch Saver" that can step through folders of BIP files and load them onto a new skeleton and resave them with new bones or other changes.