Design And Development Of The Animator Tree Editor Based On Python

In the video game,most characters are required to show different movements based on different states,and to switch into corresponding animation when states are changing.When the states become complicated,animations of the character can be controlled by concept of state machine.This article focuses on the expansion of the state machine into a tree structure,and also implements an editor for editing the animation tree.The conventional method in game development is to utilize the state machine to control the animation systems of characters.State machine can define character movements as separate states,which are controlled by different parameters.This method is very clear and convenient during the operation.However when the states of the game increase,the changes of controlled states become more complicated.Hence in this condition,single state machine is not competent enough,and multiple state machines are required to better control the entire animation system of characters.This paper assembles the animation state machine into the tree structure or animation tree,and discusses the details of how to design the structure of animation tree,including the design of multiple node types,edges and attributes.This article also design and implement an editor for animation tree,with many fundamental functions for editing the animation tree,such as visual representation,animation tree structure edit,state machine edit,attributes edit,serialization and deserialization,etc.Some difficult and complicated functions during the implementation of editor will also be introduced in this article.Finally,the editor has successfully been implemented,and has already been applied to some game programs.