Upgrading the animation editor was an exciting task to undertake with a lot of challenges along the way. I wanted to improve the overall look and user experience of the editor while making it powerful, if not the most powerful plugin in the ROBLOX library.

During my first pass at upgrading the editor I focused on adding features and getting comfortable with the large amount of code that had gone into the feature over multiple years.  Ensuring you fully understand someone else’s code can be a daunting task, but it’s essential for optimizing and implementing new features successfully.  Once I was confident I finally began to implement new features, some of which included a grid below your character and customizable timeline increments.  With these features and many others in place we started to see a huge improvement in the capabilities of the editor.  

Animation by “MisterObvious”

During his time as an intern Davidii worked on implementing easing styles.  He did a great job establishing the necessary infrastructure required for me to step in and finish the feature.   Now any animation can be brought to life with some really neat easing styles.

• Linear (the default)
• Constant (instant)
• Elastic (my favorite, a springy transition)
• Bounce (bounces to the end position)
• Cubic (accelerates / decelerates to end position)

Along with the easing styles mentioned above there are easing types (Out, InOut, In) that allow you to further customize the style of your animation. This gives each style 3 separate variations (excluding linear) for a total of 13 unique tweens. With these new easing styles and types, developers can make top tier animations with…well… ease.

Animation by “OKevinO”

Once the functionality improvements were complete, I began to focus on the user experience of the feature.  The animation editor had previously been a bit cumbersome to use and was often criticized for being buggy.  Because of its previous reputation I spent an ample amount of time focusing on reliability and usability.  Now developers can feel confident using the animation editor for implementing even incredibly complex animations.  With a tool that is both easier to use and more powerful than ever before the possibilities for creation have never been better.  

So jump in studio and check it out!

Download Animation Editor Here

-Alex “Rukiryo” Hicks