Utilizing mobiles as "animation containers"

[Feynman]

I was working on a flag animation when i had an idea to store the animation in a mobile.
Mobiles consist of 300-1050 frames, featuring 5 directions and several actions like walking, running, attacking, and so on.
There would be some great advantages in patching a flag as a mobile.
- just one file to patch -> much less work and used space in the muls
- all 8 directions available (three would be "for free" due to being mirrored )
- destroyable
- many actions possible: no wind, a little wind, strong wind, and other things. Even a burning flag if you want to

This could be used for many other things like siege weapons, mill-wheels, smoke from a chimney... etc.
My basic plan would be to freeze the mobile and then run animations with Mobile.Animate.
I didn't write a script in years, so before i start... what are your opinions on this?
Can you see problems with this?
Do you know a simple way to suppress the little "movements" while standing around?
Is their an elegant solution to run an animation indefinitely?

 

[Voxpire]

I love this idea.

And yes, there is existing code you can reference for this if you can find it - CharacterStatues.

They use a CanSee() override to force-send an animation state packet to the client.

 

[Boldunum]

I'm not sure but I think I did something like that years ago ( not the flags and stuff). I called it anim mixing or something. Did that in 2014. But I just mixed existing animations. Like I would take one frame from one animation then from another and so on.

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[m309]

Love the idea as well Feynman!

As Voxpire said, Character Statues are the perfect starting point.

 

[Feynman]

Thanks for the hints! I will have a look at that

@baldunum
Is the character in the video a player character? I mean, is it still controlled by a player?
I had a look at your other videos, interesting stuff
Did you change the animation for the "wall of stone" or how did you stop the animation at that certain frame?