Basics of Avatar Animation
MYTY Kit supports both bone animation and frame animation.
- For example, to make the eyes blink, we need to separate the original image into an image of the face and an image of the eyes. Similarly, to make the hair move, we need to separate the original image into an image of the hair and an image of the head.


- Bones can be “implanted” to an avatar to simulate human-like joint movements.

- 1.Define parts that you want to give movement to, and decompose them into layers.
- 2.If you’d like to bind more than one bone to an image layer, use the “Bone Weight” function.
- When the user makes a particular movement, a corresponding image (sprite) is is displayed. This is useful when the desired animation requires a change in the frame’s graphic elements.

- For example, you can set a different graphic (sprite) for the avatar’s
default Eyes&Mouth
and theLaugh eyes&mouth
. When the user laughs, thedefault Eyes&Mouth
will be changed to theLaugh eyes&mouth
graphic.



- 1.For frame animation to work properly, all involved layers must be organized a certain way.
- 2.In the example above, we will frame animate the Eyes and the Mouth.
- 3.Decide which will be the default sprites (for when the person has a neutral expression) and which will be the animation sprites (for when the person is actively talking or blinking etc).
- 4.Keep the default sprites under the
Face > Eyes
, and theFace > Mouth
folders (groups). This will result in the following three layers: Face > Eyes > DefaultEye_R (layer) Face > Eyes > DefaultEye_L (layer) Face > Mouth > DefaultMouth (layer) - 5.Create a new root folder (group) called Animation, and create children folders (groups) that mimic the organizational hierarchy of the three layers in the previous step. This will result in the following folders: Animation > Face > Eyes > DefaultEye_R (folder) Animation > Face > Eyes > DefaultEye_L (folder) Animation > Face > Mouth > DefaultMouth (folder)
- 6.Move all animation sprites and a copy of the default sprites to their respective folders. This will result in the following ten layers: Animation > Face > Eyes > DefaultEye_R > DefaultEye_R, AngryEye_R, SmileEye_R (layers) Animation > Face > Eyes > DefaultEye_L > DefaultEye_L, AngryEye_L, SmileEye_L (layers) Animation > Face > Mouth > DefaultMouth > DefaultMouth, SmileMouth, LaughMouth, AngryMouth (layers)
All image layers and folders under the “Animation” folder must retain the same organizational hierarchy as the original it was duplicated from.