Working with Animsets

General Usage

Animsets are groups of animations that are stored separately from an actor (a .facefx file).  They have two functions:

1. Help game developers manage memory.  Games with a lot of dialogue can have thousands of animations per actor.  By storing animations in animsets, a group of related animations (for a single level for example) can be stored in one animset file, then loaded and unloaded from the game dynamically.  This requires that the FaceFX SDK is integrated with the game.

2. Allow animations to be shared across characters.  If multiple characters are sharing the same animation, using animsets keeps the data in one place.  Animset files also make sharing animations between actors easy.

Mounting vs. Importing

In FaceFX Studio, you can either mount or import animsets. In both cases, the animations are available for editing and transferring inside of FaceFX Studio. 

• Mounting keeps the animations inside of the animset file.  When you save, the .facefx file is saved, but in addition the .animset file is saved to reflect any changes. 

• Importing an animset makes a copy of the animations contained in the animset and stores them in the .facefx file. 

Unmounting vs. Exporting

• Unmounting detaches a mounted animset from the actor.  It does not save the file.

• Exporting removes a group of animations from the actor and stores them in an animset file.

Other

• The Slade Sample content mounts the NoTextNoTweaking.animset every time you load him.  See the Slade-Maya.fxl file for the commands that do this.  Also see the Automatically Executed Commands section for more info on triggering commands automatically.
• When you analyze files, you can specify the group that contains them.  You can specify a mounted animset to analyze into, or you can easily transfer animations between mounted and internal animation sets.
• The “Default” animation group is a special case and can not be exported or unmounted.  
• Animation group names must be unique, so you can’t mount an animset with an existing animation group name.