Animate a placed entity

Reviewed

Fly a crate, a lamp, a hum or a plume of smoke between up to twelve captured waypoints.

In the menus: ESC → Design → Manage → ANIMATE

Select the row for a model, light, sound or effect, then press ANIMATE. See everything you have placed covers finding the row.

The KEYFRAMES band reads the track back as travel time, plus dwell where a key holds. A slot with no key reads --:

1: 4.0s   2: 1.5s+2s   3: --   4: --   5: --   6: --   7: --   8: --   9: --   10: --   11: --   12: --

Capturing keys in the world

Select PLACE KEYS IN WORLD.

On an empty track, key 1 is set for you where the thing already stands.

The mode starts with your body as the cursor, so a key drops at your feet. Press X to use the surface under your crosshair instead.

The keys row along the bottom of the screen is the authority:

  • MOUSE1 drop or update key
  • E/Q select a key,
  • CTRL+MOUSE1 replace here
  • WHEEL adjust
  • TAB to cycle the dials
  • X switch cursor
  • R undo
  • MOUSE2 back to the panel.

Selecting a saved key loads its travel, dwell, pose and the values for that kind of entity.

Adjust the dials, then press MOUSE1 to update it where it is.

Press Backspace to clear the selected key.

Hold CTRL and press MOUSE1 to move it to your current cursor instead.

Use Travel for the time to reach a key and Dwell for the pause there.

Use X, Y and Z to adjust its position.

The other dials depend on the entity:

KindOther dials
ModelScale, Pitch, Yaw, Roll
EffectPitch, Yaw, Interval
LightIntensity, Red, Green, Blue
Soundnone

Travel and the kind-specific dials carry into the next key. Dwell resets after every drop.

Key 1 offers only Travel and Dwell, because it is pinned to the pose the thing was placed in. Updating key 1 changes those times without moving or turning it. You cannot replace key 1 at the cursor.

Yaw is a dial rather than your view, so a prop's facing does not drift with where you happen to be looking.

Choosing how the track plays

Choose these settings before or after placing the first key. Mode decides what happens when the track runs out of keys:

ModeWhat it does
Oncestops on the last key
Loopflies the whole route back to key 1 and goes again
Ping-pongretraces the route in reverse, then forward again
Repeatruns key 1 to the last key with no leg home. The wrap is a teleport

  • Smooth flies a curve through the keys, so a key with no dwell is passed at speed. Unticked, the track takes straight legs and a corner at every key.

  • Ease slows into and out of rests.

  • Play on scene load starts the track when a scene containing this entity loads.

Starting and stopping a track

PLAY runs it, STOP halts it where it stands, RESET sends it back to the first keyframe, and CLEAR deletes every key.

Editing the entity updates keys matching its resting pose. Between keys, the path stays unchanged and playback restores it. Use RESET before editing the start.

There can be up to 32 single-entity tracks in a map.

Group tracks use a separate pool. An effect also needs a loop interval before it can be animated.

Prefer the console?

key captures the entity's current pose, so the workflow is move the thing, capture, move it again, capture again.

Travel clamps between 50 and 600000 milliseconds and defaults to 1000. Named pairs work too, so /animate 4 key 2 travel 10000 dwell 500 is the same command.

/animate <id> key <n> remove
/animate <id> mode <once|loop|pingpong|repeat>
/animate <id> path <straight|smooth>
/animate <id> ease <on|off>
/animate <id> autostart <on|off>
/animate <id> play|stop|reset|clear
/animate <id>
/animate list

curve is an accepted alias for smooth, and 1 and 0 work in place of on and off.

/animate stopall stops every playing single-entity track on the server, whoever authored it. It does not stop group animations. There is no confirmation step and no version that stops only your own.