Erikari wrote"Changing the FPS affects the speed of the animations at runtime and the setting is for the entire project. Changing the FPS does not change the frames for existing keys, so your animations will run slower or faster. This means you should set the FPS before you start animating."
You added something dangerous XD
I was wondering: let's say I have 30 fps, does this mean that at render time if a computer is able to render at 60 fps it won't? or is it something just to make animators more comfortable?
Maybe it's a stupid question but since I'm not using beta version at the moment I don't really know how it works yet (:
I think this point of confusion is good to elaborate on.
Maybe it should be named "Dopesheet Framerate"
A custom value here doesn't make animations at runtime "framerate dependent" (ie, movements won't speed up or slow down depending on how fast your machine is. They'll just be smoother or choppier).
Once you export, all times are converted to seconds using the fps factor. 30fps was implied before Spine 3.5. Meaning 30 frames turns into 1 second.
Animations are interpolated in the editor and by the runtimes so animations can play at 120 fps if your hardware could handle it.
So at 30 fps (default):
Any key you place at frame 30 will be converted to a "1.0". Meaning 1 second. (frame 30/30fps = 1 second)
At runtime, it will use the exported time in seconds and can play as smoothly as the hardware and engine allows.
If you change it to 24 fps.
Any key you place at frame 30 will be converted to "1.25". Meaning 1.25 seconds. (frame 30/24fps = 1.25 seconds)
At runtime, it will use the exported time in seconds and can play as smoothly as the hardware and engine allows.
When you drag around in the dopesheet, the dopesheet cursor snaps at whole "frames" by default.
So the practical reasons for the custom dopesheet framerate are:
- Traditionally-trained animators can animate with timings they are familiar with. (8fps, 12fps, 24fps)
- Some image sequences/frame-by-frame animations can be keyed at the intended framerate. They could be pre-renderered effects exported from another program, or hand-animated frame-by-frame.
- Very fast movements can be tuned precisely (at 60 or 120fps). The intention may be to give it extra polish, fix visible glitching because keys spaced 1/30 of a second is too far apart for the given movement, or just to better-support games that involve periods of slowmo. This could always be done before, but custom dopesheet framerate means keys can now snap to whole frame numbers, making editing super easy.
Typically, you would only set the framerate when you start the project. (say, 24, or 30)
An animator should know what framerate they are comfortable or intend to use and set it at value.
Every now and then, you may realize you need to tune movements to be faster, so you may need to double your framerate. That would be easy to fix in that case. You just need to scale the animation keys out to double using box selection scaling.
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After that, you would keep the framerate at the new rate.
