nikhilnxvverma1 / Timeshift

A keyframe based animation software with support for both temporal and spatial animation(for translation)

Timeshift

Timeshift is an animation tool that allows the animation of various types of shapes. Shapes like rectangles, polygons, circles, triangles etc. contain several properties that can be tweaked to change their appearance. By ‘key framing’ these properties across a timeline, these shapes can be animated.

The system comprises of a tool based graphical workspace and a tabular key frame table for animating several properties of a shape.This also includes motion path for spatial animation.The animations themselves are made in seperate compositions Shapes can be selected individually or in a group with an outline around them. On double clicking a shape, a detailed "gizmo" outline appears for visually tweaking that particular shape's properties. Every action in the software is undoable(and redoable) to multiple levels.

System Overview

Timeshift is a multi module gradle project written in Java(JavaFX used for the frontend). The project is primarily divided into five loosely coupled sub projects: The first three projects are coded to be completely void of any java specific dependency

1. Util This is a relatively small module that sits at the very top.This project deals with all the utility based classes. Some important ones include UtilPoint, BezierPoint and MathUtil

2. Timeline This module is the beating heart of all the animation stuff. Essentially it comprises of a Timeline class and a set of ChangeNode classes that facilitate a callback based mechanism for triggering a change.

3. Motion This module keeps all the shape models and additionally it also has composition controllers that basically "contain" all the elements of a composition

4. Level editor This is the JavaFX project that has the main class. The term "level editor" is actually used mostly because it started with the intention to be used as a tool in a game. But now its much bigger than that.From this project onwards, there is natural dependency on every Java based feature.

5. Game This project is mostly unused for now but will be used later on while creating a "runtime" for running these animations independently without the editor in a different frontend.In other words , it will essentially house all the "views".Again ignore the word "game"

The main project sources exists in the timeshift folder. This project is still under development, but you can check some of the pressable tools that work. These include :

• Selection
• Circle
• Triangle
• Parallelogram
• Polygon

Instructions for running

To run the project , ensure that you have the following installed:

• Gradle
• JDK 1.8

Then open a terminal and proceed with the following commands:

1. cd timeshift (goes to the main project folder )
2. gradle (builds the project)
3. cd editor (goes to the Level Editor sub project)
4. gradle execute (executes the Level Editor's build)

You can import the project(as a gradle project) in your favorite IDE if you want( I use IntelliJ). Please let me know if you face any issues.