I made a rather complex animation in Armory. I’m happy with the result, but the node network has kind of exploded. This is partly due to insufficient control of animations.
I want to make a case for improved animation control.
Currently, all animation actions “auto-loop”. To stop that behavior, you either have to use a Pause Action node or use the Logic Pack (Play Action with Params node).
For simple animations, this is not so much an issue. However, when you do something complex, the number of “animation stops” required gets to be rather annoying. Check the attached image. The orange squares are regular Pause Action nodes, the blues are Play Action with Param nodes from the logic pack.
In my case, having animation control to prevent looping would have removed 77 nodes from the network. This is excluding the 56 blues.
In my case, some of the animations are the reverse of a previous animation. I had to copy/reverse the initial animation since I have no control over playback direction.
I’d like to suggest/request the following improvements:
- animations do not loop by default. If looping is required, this is selectable
- control over play direction and speed.
I’ll try and post the end result in the showcase topic.