This page provides information on the projects in Anima.
Overview
Projects are used to organize scenes and manage settings and assets. The scenes cannot exist without a project, therefore, to start working with anima® you must either load an existing project or create a new one.
It is possible to merge resources and scenes from other projects. Also, a project can be easily shared with other users by exporting (and importing) it.
The Export pack command will automatically collect all the assets used in the project and pack them in a single file with the *.anipack extension. All that process is done automatically with a single command (File > Export pack).
Load a Project
The quickest way to open a project is from the Welcome dialog that opens up by default when Anima is started. There you will find the 5 latest projects that have been opened recently.
To open any of them just select it and click the Open button.
If the project you want to load is not listed there, you browse to find it using either the Browse button from the Welcome dialog.
Or use File > Open project (Ctrl+O).
Browse to the path where the *.aniproj file is stored and click Open.
Finally, select the scene from that project that you want to continue working on and click Open.
Create a New Project
To create a new project you can either use the Create a new project button from the Welcome dialog.
Or use the File > New project.
A Project: New dialog will appear with the following options.
- Set the name of the new project.
- Set the path where you want to place the new project. The name of the project folder will be the same as the name of the project.
- Set the quality (size and detail) of the textures that will be used by all the actors from this project.
Depending on the quality selected, the following texture sizes will be generated.
4. Set the mode that you want the Resource Cache of this project to be managed.
To know more about the Resource Cache and how it works take a look at the article: Using Anima on a network.
Those options can be later modified from the Project Settings that can be accessed through File > Settings option.
The Units option from the Project Settings dialog does not appear in the Create a new project dialog to avoid misunderstandings. The Units are managed automatically because the animation simulations are very sensitive to that setting, and they must be always correct in order to get useful results.
The only situation where that Units parameter is taken into account is when a collision background is imported manually (we highly recommend doing it with the Anima Alive instead). And even then, this is used only as a default option, because it can be modified in the Import: Model settings dialog too.
Therefore, as it has so little impact on the workflow, we decided to not show it in the Create a new project dialog.
Save a Project
To save the current project go to the File > Save or use the shortcut Ctrl + S.
To save the current project with a different filename, go to File > Save As.
And then select the path where you want to store the new project.
This will copy the contents of the current Project folder to the path selected and set in there the new project name. Then Anima opens that project automatically with the same scenes that were opened at that moment.
The new project has exactly the same content (settings, scenes, assets, etc) as the original.
Export a Project
The Project Export command will automatically collect all the assets used in the project and pack them in a single file with the *.anipack extension. All this packing process is done automatically.
To use it, go to File > Export pack.
The Export dialog appears. Select the path where you want to place the anipack file and click Save.
Then you are asked if you want to include the actors in the package.
If you answer YES, all the actors and the resources needed by them will be included in the resulting anipack.
When the process is done, a notification is shown:
Instead, if the answer is NO, all the actors are excluded from the package, resulting in much smaller file sizes. For example, this was the size difference between including or not the actors in the Gym_Project package.
As Anima is able to automatically download all the actors of the scenes, not including the actors is a very interesting option when the project does not use any custom models (modified or imported from 3rd party providers), and you know for sure that the colleague that will open the anipack also has access to the all those same models.
It is always a good idea to not include the actors when you are sending an anipack to our Support.
Import a Project
To import a packed project (anipack), go to File > Import pack.
The Import dialog will appear. Select the file that you want import and Open.
The anipack selected is unpacked into a new project folder with the same name as the original project (not the name of the anipack) and placed inside the Default projects path, which is defined in the Preferences (Edit > Preferences):
Merge Two Projects
Sometimes you might want to re-use some resources or scenes that were included in another project. You can do that by going to File > Merge project.
Select the project from where you want to merge the resources and click Open.
A new dialog opens where you can select what kind of resources you want to merge into your current project.
Select the ones you need and then click Merge to copy them. From then on, a copy of those resources is available also in your current project. If any of the merged files have the same name as some of the ones that you already have in your current project, they are automatically renamed.
Notice that some of the combinations that can be selected may cause some problems. For example, if you select to copy the scenes but not backgrounds, and those scenes use those backgrounds, you get an error when you try to open the scenes in the current project.
