Thanks! Here is one of the games by Sinister Cyclops using Creature for their boss battle:
Here is OTK Games using it for their 2D side scroller title:
More demos and updates to follow, stay tuned!
Another update, there is now a new Leg Motor that allows you to animate 3 limb movement very easily:
Live WebGL HTML5 Demo:
http://www.kestrelmoon.com/creature/demo_cat.html
Tutorial video here:
Hello all,
Thanks to the hardwork of God of Pen, the UE4 Creature runtimes have gained some very powerful features:
-
State Machine driven by UE4’s Gui System
-
Enhanced Animation Clip Preview
and much much more!
Also the Creature runtimes now provide a CreatureMeshComponent for use in your UE4 objects 
Here is a preview of what to expect:
The change will be merged into the main branch soon.
In the meantime, you can check out God of Pen’s Creature Editor Runtimes here:
Cheers!
Hi , thanks for releasing this! It looks very promising. I’m currently evaluating 2d animation tools for my team, and I’m looking through the free samples and the plugin now.
We require a tool that supports all the platforms that ue4 supports (except consoles). Are there any platforms not currently supported by creature?
I’m currently using 4.9.2 and have tried so far on windows and on HTML5. On HTML5 I had a couple of compilation errors:
- I had to add “ThirdParty/CreatureLib/Includes” to the PrivateIncludePaths in CreaturePlugin.Build.cs, as some files in that folder were failing to be found
- I had to convert instances of “INT32” to “int32” in the plugin code
Those were the only changes that were needed though, and after that the plugin compiled and linked fine (although with lots of warnings).
Unfortunately, because the .json file is referenced as a string, the engine isn’t aware of the reference. This means when packaging a project, it doesn’t automatically get added to the packaged build. Consider changing the plugin so that the .json files are imported by the user as a specific asset type, which is referenced by the CreatureMeshComponent/CreatureActor. Then, when the game data is cooked for packaging, it will be automatically included.
This packaging problem also occurs on a windows build. To fix it, I had to add the folder containing the .json to the “Additional Non-Asset Directories” list in the packaging section of project settings. It’s not a total blocker, but would be a lot simpler if it wasn’t necessary, and more robust for different platforms, perhaps.
edit: so that solution didn’t work for HTML5. When I package that, I get a crash with this callstack. It appears because of the special way the html5 build is packaged with compression and served, it can’t find the file.
CreatureCore::LoadDataPacket?S(undefined?N?&)
CreatureCore::InitCreatureRender()
UCreatureMeshComponent::StandardInit()
UCreatureMeshComponent::OnRegister()
UActorComponent::ExecuteRegisterEvents()
UActorComponent::RegisterComponentWithWorld(UWorld?)
UActorComponent::RegisterComponent()
_GLOBAL__N_1::RegisterInstancedComponent(UActorComponent?)
USimpleConstructionScript::ExecuteScriptOnActor(bool&)
AActor::ExecuteConstruction(bool&)
AActor::FinishSpawning(bool&)
AActor::PostSpawnInitialize?(undefined?S?&)
UWorld::SpawnActor(FActorSpawnParameters?&)
UWorld::SpawnActor(FActorSpawnParameters?&)
undefined UWorld::SpawnActor?(undefined?T?)
AGameMode::SpawnDefaultPawnFor_Implementation(AActor?**)
AGameMode::execSpawnDefaultPawnFor(void&)
UFunction::Invoke(void*&)
UObject::ProcessEvent(void**)
AActor::ProcessEvent(void**)
AGameMode::SpawnDefaultPawnFor(AActor?**)
AGameMode::RestartPlayer(AController?)
AGameMode::HandleMatchHasStarted()
AGameMode::SetMatchState?5()
AGameMode::StartMatch()
AGameMode::StartPlay()
UWorld::BeginPlay()
UEngine::LoadMap?F(FWorldContext?4?&)
UEngine::Browse?F(FWorldContext?4?&)
UGameInstance::StartGameInstance()
UGameEngine::Init(IEngineLoop?*)
FEngineLoop::Init()
HTML5_Init()
main()
Hello eyesiah,
Thanks for the information! That is very helpful and is no doubt something I will have to look into. I do document in my packaging section of the Creature Runtimes page that you need to copy in the JSON files over after packaging to make it all work for now.
The full Creature runtime source is available on Github so it really should run on most platforms.
Cheers!
Hello all,
You can now record your own manual keyframe animation and capture those into your own custom cycle motors, allowing you to combine the flexibility of manual animation with the power of procedural animation:
Cheers!
I am happy to announce the brand new Lip Syncing Feature for Creature Pro!
Lip Syncing allows you to construct a set of animated mouth shapes via pre-drawn sprite frames and an input speech audio file of your choice. Lip syncing works in conjunction with the Sprite Frame Manager and the 3rd party Open Source Papagayo program.
Full documentation is here:
Creature … ature.html
A video tutorial has also been uploaded:
Cheers!
This looks fascinating. Bookmarking for future purchase.
On that note, you need to adjust your shopping cart. Trial/Basic/Pro should be: Trial/Standard/Professional (or just Pro… I like Professional myself).
You also need to set up the sales like this:
- Standard License ($99)
- Professional Upgrade License ($170) *Requires Standard License
- Professional License ($270)
I would also adjust the license pricing a bit to make it more of an “even” price. Standard License: $99.99, Professional Upgrade: Either $149.99 or $199.99, and the Professional License: Either $249.99 or $299.99. When you get to a point where you’re releasing Version 2 of the software, then keep the same pricing scheme, but also add another category, “V1 to V2 Upgrade License: $49.99 for Standard, $99.99 (or $149.99) for Professional”. Basically version upgrades are half-off the full price of the license.
Hello everybody,
Some more updates on the Creature Animation Tool. Creature now supports PostProcess exports of Sprites with effects like Pixel Art, Outline etc.
Video below:
Also, there is now a new** Mesh Bone Path Motor** that very easily allows you to animate a chain of bones along a user defined spline path:
Check out the recent British Library Art Project Demo using UE4 and paintings from the 1800s:
We hope this will satisfy your 2D Animation/Game Dev requirements in the UE4 framework
The runtimes have also been updated, you can grab the UE4 runtimes on github:
Cheers!
Wow this is amazing.
A new tutorial showcasing the new UE4 Plugin features for Creature has now been uploaded:
This shows the new CreatureMeshComponent and CreatureAsset objects in UE4.
Cheers
A new tutorial for the Mac showing you how to generate and build in XCode is now available:
Cheers
A new tutorial showing how to use the Normal Map & Lighting Preview Tool together with a UE4 portion is now available:
Also check out this new Fighting Game Character Demo Authored with Creature and UE4:
That’s Nice.
New Trailer for 2016!
Check it out here:
Hello all,
The Creature Animation Plugin for UE4 now supports Live IK for a 2 bone system.
The feature has been checked into Github and you can check out the tutorial here:
Cheers
Latest Windows Build now features 3D to 2D Mocap Transfer:
Hello all,
You can now author paths with UE4’s Spline Component and import that directly into Creature as animated Motion Paths
Plugin has been updated to 4.13 with some minor caveats, will be fixed shortly.
Please grab the latest sources here:
Cheers
Hello all,
In conjunction with the launch of UE4.13, the latest update to Creature now supports the export of Alembic into UE4.13! This means all advanced mesh motor deformations + sprite swapping are supported for native engine file formats.
Cheers