05-20-2012, 09:41 AM
Well, it's a tool that can be applied in a number of different ways, and at different times. Providing a full explanation is time consuming, difficult and somewhat pointless, because if you understand the basic concept, it's not too hard to infer most of the rest of it.
The idea of tweening is that you supply some basic frames for your animation, and any frames in between are added automatically. This can be applied in multiple different ways, since you can tween different parts of a model with different values of easing (easing being a term used for the distribution of speed of the object. With no easing, speed will be constant, with easing, the movement will accelerate or decelerate depending on the easing value. To make this work properly, you'll need to mix and match easing values depending on context. There are other parameters you can apply, but they aren't completely necessary).
In order to do tweening, you'll need a tool that supports it. Now is where I'll talk about what I meant by "applying it at different times".
When making any program, things can be done at 3 different points: Compile time (hard-coded into the program), load time (set up while the program is loading) or run time (dynamically running alongside everything else). The more you have happening at run time, the slower your program will run, however, the more freedom you have to adapt it to circumstance. This can also be applied to tweening. In most cases, games will apply the tweens at compile time (or rather, upon making the animations), so the game will read the animation as a series of frames at 60 FPS, and treat the tweens no differently from normal frames. This means little processing has to be done at run time to make the animations work, and the results will be consistent. However, it is technically possible to apply tweens at run time. This will, of course, take more processing, since the game will have to calculate the in-between frames on the fly, but in doing so, you can automatically smooth out transitions between different animations. There is also, however, the potential for the tweens to break, and cause awkward animation bugs (such as the "legs flailing everywhere" sort of thing you see in Gary's Mod a lot), which would not occur with pre-applied tweens.
I do not recommend applying tweens at run-time unless you know what you're doing.
The idea of tweening is that you supply some basic frames for your animation, and any frames in between are added automatically. This can be applied in multiple different ways, since you can tween different parts of a model with different values of easing (easing being a term used for the distribution of speed of the object. With no easing, speed will be constant, with easing, the movement will accelerate or decelerate depending on the easing value. To make this work properly, you'll need to mix and match easing values depending on context. There are other parameters you can apply, but they aren't completely necessary).
In order to do tweening, you'll need a tool that supports it. Now is where I'll talk about what I meant by "applying it at different times".
When making any program, things can be done at 3 different points: Compile time (hard-coded into the program), load time (set up while the program is loading) or run time (dynamically running alongside everything else). The more you have happening at run time, the slower your program will run, however, the more freedom you have to adapt it to circumstance. This can also be applied to tweening. In most cases, games will apply the tweens at compile time (or rather, upon making the animations), so the game will read the animation as a series of frames at 60 FPS, and treat the tweens no differently from normal frames. This means little processing has to be done at run time to make the animations work, and the results will be consistent. However, it is technically possible to apply tweens at run time. This will, of course, take more processing, since the game will have to calculate the in-between frames on the fly, but in doing so, you can automatically smooth out transitions between different animations. There is also, however, the potential for the tweens to break, and cause awkward animation bugs (such as the "legs flailing everywhere" sort of thing you see in Gary's Mod a lot), which would not occur with pre-applied tweens.
I do not recommend applying tweens at run-time unless you know what you're doing.
![[Image: lZfN51N.png]](/image.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FlZfN51N.png&hash=640d51e237c42891e112578136888e6d)