The text below is a written version of the video above, choose whichever you find easier to follow.
Extra note: If you experience errors after copying the codes highlighted yellow it may be because the indents of the text get published as spaces instead of tabs, you will need to delete all of these spaces and indent it properly in your text editor.
=== TUTORIAL #1 ===
GETTING STARTED
— Step 1: Referencing
Make a new folder called “animations” inside your simfile’s folder.
Open .SM file in notepad and change #BGCHANGES:; to #FGCHANGES:;
Type the beat number you want the animation to start from:
#FGCHANGES:0.000=
Type the folder containing your animation:
#FGCHANGES:0.000=animations=
The rest influence whether the animation fades in and/or out and over what period, best bet is to just keep it the same as this:
#FGCHANGES:0.000=animations=1.000=0=0=1;
Save .SM file then go to your “animations” folder.
— Step 2: Structuring the Animation
Open a blank text file in Notepad and “Save As…” default.xml into the animations folder.
default.xml is the file that is referenced by your simfile when you select a folder to display, each folder you make should have its own default.xml file.
Keeping default.xml open, Open and close an <ActorFrame> tag and a <children> tag.
<ActorFrame>
<children>
</children>
</ActorFrame>
Think of an actorframe as a box and the children as the box’s contents, your animations will be written between the children tags.
You can place another actorframe inside the children tags or directly below the closed actorframe but for now we will work with one.
Get any sort of image you want and place it into your “animations” folder.
Create a layer tag between your children tags, a layer is best described as a piece of paper stuck to the front of your box.
All of the layer’s properties will be within the open tag, therefore a slash needs to be indicated to close the tag off.
<Layer/>
Place your cursor between the R and the Slash and make 3 new lines.
<Layer
/>
On the first line you reference the file you’d like to show, the filename must be in quotes.
<Layer
File="nyan.png"
/>
On the second line you declare what happens when the image is shown with either an OnCommand or InitCommand.
<Layer
File="nyan.png"
InitCommand=""
/>
The third line closes the layer off, you can have as many layers as you wish between the children tags.
Layers listed first are displayed first, therefore listing further layers down the page will appear on top of the first one listed, like sticking pieces of paper on top of each other.
— Step 3: Command Structure
A command acts like a timeline, every change you make to the file is done in the order you enter it into the command.
Everything entered into a command can be considered as a personal attribute of the file that you are altering.
They are easy to use because they have a basic structure similar to editing stop gimmicks in notepad.
To set the X coordinate of the file to 320 and the Y coordinate to 240 just do this.
x,320;y,240;
You write the parameter followed by a comma, the comma tells the command that the parameter has been entered and now it’s time to enter the value of that parameter.
After entering the value, you close it off with a semicolon, the semicolon tells the command that the parameter has been set and you are moving onto a new one.
Basic Parameters:
x: sets the horizontal coordinate of the file.
y: sets the vertical coordinate of the file.
sleep: sets the amount of time (in seconds) before setting the next parameter.
Now the command starts to take shape as a basic timeline, in this case it sets the X coordinate to 320 and the Y coordinate to 240, then it waits for 2 seconds, after that it sets the X coordinate to 100 and the Y coordinate to 300,then it waits for 1.2 seconds.
<Layer
File="nyan.png"
InitCommand="x,320;y,240;sleep,2;x,100;y,300;sleep,1.2;"
/>
As soon as a command ends, the file disappears.
At this point you will have a functioning foreground effect, it’s still very basic it’s a start!
Tune in next time for a more in depth view of commands!
