Anima’s texturing tools give you the ability to quickly and effortlessly generate limitless color variations for your characters. Using the easy to understand editor view you can specify exactly which sub materials will be used to limit color variations to individual or a selection of parts of the model. This is ideal for preserving skin and hair  while randomizing clothing for example. For even more control the Hue, Saturation, Lightness and threshold sliders allow you to protect parts of a texture based on image information.

You can also load maps into a 3rd party photo editing app from Anima to work on the textures directly. Anima does this by moving them to a temporary folder, once you save your files they’re automatically moved back to the project folders for a seamless bidirectional workflow.

Procedures

To Edit Textures

To customize your character their textures can be modified in a 3rd party editing program like Photoshop. To do this:

  1. Set anima® to Editing Mode:
    anima_editing_mode_2018-08-20_18-21-43

  2. Select a character from the Actors Library.
  3. Select the Rest-Pose from the Motion Clips library:
  4. If you are trying to edit a System Actor you need to first create a “local copy” of it inside your Project. Right-click and select Duplicate.

  5. The new asset will be marked with a “start icon” identifying it as “Project Asset“. Now, select it.
  6. In the Actor Information Panel, double-click on any of the Textures in the maps list.
  7. A folder will open showing all of the texture maps for the selected actor.
  8. Open any of these in an image editor and make your changes.2016-04-14_21-27-08
  9. When you’re done save the texture and return to Anima.
  10. Click Save in the Actor Information panel to commit the changes and update the preview.

NOTE: If you don’t want to affect the system actors for this project you can duplicate the character. This will create a copy of all relevant assets including the textures.

To create color variations

  1. Select a character from the Actors Library.
  2. Select the Rest-Pose and Actor Editor mode from the Motion Clips library
  3. In the Actor Information Panel, change the Edit Textures mode to Generate Variations.
  4. Use the Variation slider to move through the existing variations.
  5. To Create a new variation, click .
  6. Change the colors using the Color Filter, Filter amount, Modify Hue, Modify Saturation and Modify Luminosity sliders.
  7. If you’d like to add another variation, click again and repeat the process.
  8. You can also randomize the  color settings by clicking . Keep clicking until you find a combination you like and either click save or use the sliders to fine-tune it.
  9. When you’re happy with your variations click Save. They’ll now be available for every scene saved in this project.

NOTE To delete the current variation, click the button.

To Protect Materials

To control what parts of a model to randomize, you can set different materials as Changeable or Protected. Only changeable materials can be edited using the Generate Variations tool. Anima automatically detects the materials applied to your character models and assigns them to the Protected list. To be able to add variations, you will need to move one or more materials to the Changeable. To do this:

  1. Select a character from the Actors Library.
  2. Select the Rest-Pose and Actor Editor mode from the Motion Clips library.
  3. In the Actor Information Panel, change the Edit Textures mode to Protect Range.
  4. Drag the materials you want to be able to edit from the Protected list to the Changeable list.
    Protected part of the model show in solid yellow, changeable part display their maps.
  5. Switch Edit Textures Mode to Generate Variations and follow the instructions in the previous procedure to create new colors.

To Protect parts of textures based on Hue, Saturation and Lightness

In addition to be able to protect whole materials, Anima also enable you to protect parts of a map based on image data include the hue, saturation and lightness of pixels. To do this.

 

  1. Select a character from the Actors Library.
  2. Select the Rest-Pose and Actor Editor mode from the Motion Clips library.
  3. In the Actor Information Panel, change the Edit Textures mode to Protect Range.
  4. Drag the materials you want to be able to edit from the Protected list to the Changeable list.
  5. At the moment the whole material will be changeable, for example this man’s shoes, trousers and shirt will all be editable. Note the protected areas are shown in yellow.
  6. Change the Protect Hue Range, Protect Saturation Range and Protect Lightness range sliders to isolate the part of the image you want to protect. In this example we want to protect everything but the red checkers on the shirt.
  7. Use the Threshold slider to increases or decreases the amount of partially selected areas. The image below shows our example with the shirt isolated.
  8. Save and switch Edit Textures Mode to Generate Variations and follow the instructions in the previous procedure to create new colors. In our example we’re creating variations of just the shirt, even though the trousers are a part of the same texture and no mask has been manually created!

 

Interface

Actor Information

  1. Snapshot Thumbnail
    Takes a snapshot of the current character and sets it as the thumbnail
  2. Import Thumbnail
    Opens a file browser so you can load a thumbnail from disk . File formats supported are JPG, PNG, and TGA.
  3. Add New Variation
    Click this button to add a new color Variation for the selected character. Only available when Edit Textures mode is set to Generate Variations.
  4. Delete Current Variation
    Click this button to delete the active color Variation for the selected character. Only available when Edit Textures mode is set to Generate Variations.
  5. Randomize Current Variation
    Click this button to randomise the parameters of the color Variation for the selected character. This can be a very fast way to quickly create a lot of variations and works well as the starting point for custom colors. Only available when Edit Textures mode is set to Generate Variations.
  6. Save
    Save the changes to the selected character.
  7. Custom Name
    The name of the selected character. If this is an imported character the file name will be used automatically but you can edit it here.
  8. Description
    A description of the selected character. You can use this to include any useful information about the actor.
  9. Edit Textures Mode
    Sets the Texture editing mode. Use Show Textures to give you instant access to all available maps for easy manipulation in a 3rd party photo editing program. Use Protect Range to control which Material and parts of the maps are affected by the color variations features. Use Generate Variations to create color variations for your models in just a few clicks.
  10. Texture Maps
    Show a list of all the texture maps used on the selected actor. Double click one of these to open a folder where they will be available for editing in a 3rd party app.

Protect Range

  1. Protect Hue Range
    Defines a hue range that will not  be affected by color variations.
  2. Protect Saturation Range
    Defines a saturation range that will not  be affected by color variations.
  3. Protect Lightness Range
    Defines a lightness range that will not  be affected by color variations.
  4. Threshold
    Controls how wide a range is in the selection, and increases or decreases the amount of partially selected areas. Low values to restrict the range and create an abrupt transition between protected and unprotected areas, higher values increase the range and create a smoother transition.
  5. Changeable Materials
    List the materials that will be used to create color variations.
  6. Protected Materials
    List the materials that will not used to create color variations

Generate Variations

  1. Variation
    Sets the current color variation. Move this slider to go through all your saved variations.
  2. Color Filter
    Sets the Hue value of the Color Filter. This is mixed with the original maps and any Hue, Saturation and luminosity modifications. The strength of the mix affect is controlled by the filter amount.
  3. Filter Amount
    Controls the strength of the color filter effect. At 100% Only the Color Filter effect is used. At 0% Only the Modify Hue effect is used. Values inbetween blend between the Color Filter and Modify Hue effects.
  4. Modify Hue
    Shifts the hue for the changeable parts of the maps.
  5. Modify Saturation
    Edits the saturation for the changeable parts of the maps.
  6. Modify Luminosity
    Edits the lightness for the changeable parts of the maps.