StopMotionHelper/TUTORIAL.md

Stop Motion Helper tutorial

Video tutorial

You can find a video tutorial covering the basics here.

How things basically work

Before we dive into details, let's go through how the tool basically works. When you open the SMH menu, you'll notice the white vertical lines going in a row from left to right. This is the timeline. The white lines are representing frames. The white rectangle with a black outline is the playhead, which can be used to cycle through our frames.

When you select an entity and drag the playhead around, nothing happens. This is because the timeline has no recorded frames. Recorded frames are where a recorded state of the entity is stored. They are represented as green rectangles in the timeline, and they can be moved, copied and removed. When the playhead is moved on top of a recorded frame, the recorded state will be applied to the entity, and when the playhead is between two recorded frames, the entity's state will be tweened between them.

Opening the menu

The menu is opened using the +smh_menu console command. If you don't know how to access the console, there are plenty of tutorials available showing you how to do so, so google up! Now, bind a key to the command, using bind <key> +smh_menu. The menu will open when you hold down your bound key.

Before we can record frames, we need to tell SMH what entity we want to animate. An entity can be selected by right clicking objects on the screen while the SMH menu is open. When an entity is glowing with a green outline, that entity is currently selected.

NOTE: The selected entity is the entity that you want to edit frames for. All entities that have any recorded frames are animated, so you don't need to select all of the entities that you want to animate seperately.

Moving the playhead

You can simply left click and hold the playhead rectangle to drag it on the timeline. Left clicking in any empty space in the timeline will move the playhead to the nearest frame. You can also bind keys to smh_next and smh_previous commands, so you won't have to use the menu all the time.

Recording frames

Move the playhead to the position in the timeline where you want to record your frame. Then simply press the record button on the right. You can also bind a key to smh_record command, which has the same function as the record button, for easier access.

Managing recorded frames

After a recorded frame has been created, it is shown as a green rectangle in the timeline. You can click and hold the rectangle with your left mouse button to move the frame to another position. You can remove the frame by right clicking the rectangle. You can click and hold it with your middle mouse button to make a copy of the frame to another position. Copying can also be done by holding down Ctrl and right clicking.

You can select multiple keyframes by selecting them with left click and Ctrl one by one, or with left click and Shift on 2 keyframes will select those keyframes and all keyframes between them. All selected can be unselected by left clicking on any keyframe.

NOTE: Moving a frame on top of another frame will remove the frame that is not being moved. Be careful.

Adding or reducing frames

By default, the timeline is 100 frames long. This can be changed from the "Frame count" input. Frame count determines the amount of frames visible on the timeline as well as playback and rendering, which we will discuss below.

NOTE: If recorded frames go outside your frame count, they are not removed. They just won't be visible in the timeline.

Scrolling and zooming on frame timeline

There is a scroll bar at the bottom of the frame timeline. Drag it to scroll through frames that are outside of the current view. If you want to see less or more frames in the timeline at once, you can zoom in and out by using your mouse wheel.

Properties

Properties menu allows you to name and select already recorded entities and manage timelines for the selected entity.

For editing timelines, you can add up to 10 timelines for an entity, and select up to 13 modifiers between those timelines that could be manipulated by SMH.

Modifiers:

Nonphysical Bones — Model bones that can not be manipulated by the Physics gun, like fingers.

Color — Color from the Color tool.

Bodygroup — Bodygroups that can be usually changed through Context Menu.

Model scale

Soft Lamps — Properties of lamp entities from Soft Lamps addon.

Pose parameters — Animates pose parameters, those can be edited with the Easy Animation Tool addon.

Eye target — Eyes that can be manipulated with Eye Poser.

Skin — Skins that can be usually changed through Context Menu.

Facial flexes — Facial flexes that are manipulated with the Faceposer.

Advanced Cameras — Properties of cameras from Advanced Cameras addon.

Physical Bones — Anything that obeys physics and can be manipulated by Physics Gun.

Position and Rotation — Records position of the entity, however it doesn't seem to do anything for ragdolls, and on physics props its position will be overriden by Physical Bones modifier. However, it is still recommended to record this modifier on them.

Advanced Lights — Properties of light entities from Advanced Light Entities addon.

NOTE: Recording new entity will create 1 timeline with all modifiers enabled on it, but if you want to use specific timeline setup, you can use smh_savepreset console command to save timeline setup on your selected entity to use for newly recorded ones. You can access settings files by navigating to garrysmod/data/smhsettings.

World keyframes

Pressing "Select World" button in the Properties menu to select world, on which you can record special keyframes that you can edit in the Properies window. Those keyframes can execute console commands, which can be entered just as you would enter them in console, and those keyframes also can trigger specific gmod entities that can be activated through keypresses, like thrusters or wheels.

For using keypress functions, make sure that you have 2 keyframes, one for pressing a certain button, and another to release it later. You also can't press and release a key in 1 frame. Keypress function uses following keynames, and they must be separated with spaces if you want to activate multiple:

0 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , a , b , c , d , e , f , g , h , i , j , k , l , m , n , o , p , q , r , s , t , u , v , w , x , y , z , Numpad_0 , Numpad_1 , Numpad_2 , Numpad_3 , Numpad_4 , Numpad_5 , Numpad_6 , Numpad_7 , Numpad_8 , Numpad_9 , Numpad_/ , Numpad_* , Numpad_- , Numpad_+ , Numpad_Enter , Numpad_. , [ , ] , SEMICOLON , ' , ` , , , . , / , \ , - , = , ENTER , SPACE , BACKSPACE , TAB , CAPSLOCK , NUMLOCK , ESCAPE , SCROLLLOCK , INS , DEL , HOME , END , PGUP , PGDN , PAUSE , SHIFT , RSHIFT , ALT , RALT , CTRL , RCTRL , LWIN , RWIN , APP , UPARROW , LEFTARROW , DOWNARROW , RIGHTARROW , F1 , F2 , F3 , F4 , F5 , F6 , F7 , F8 , F9 , F10 , F11 , F12 , CAPSLOCKTOGGLE , NUMLOCKTOGGLE , SCROLLLOCKTOGGLE

NOTE: Some console commands can't be used since they are blocked due to safety reasons.

Animation playback

To preview your current scene, you can bind +smh_playback command to a key and hold it down. This will play the animation from frame 0 to your frame count with the framerate specified in the Framerate input. Note that previewing your animation with this might not give an accurate display of the final animation. There may be slight lagging that will not be present when rendering the animation into images.

Rendering

You can render your animation by simply using a camera and cycling through all of the frames and take pictures. However, this gets very repetitive and takes time. SMH has the smh_makejpeg command, which automates this tedious task for you! Simply bind it to a key, set up your camera and stuff, and fire away. After the rendering is complete, the resulted images are found in your local steam screenshots.

Alternatively, you can use smh_makescreenshot, which is the same as smh_makejpeg, but uses the screenshotcommand internally. This allows you to render TGA images instead of JPEG.

You can optionally input a number in those commands to start render from a certain frame.

Saving

You might want to continue animating later, or save your finished scene, just in case you want to come back and change things. You can save your scene using the save menu found in the SMH menu. In the save menu, you give it a unique name, or overwrite one of the existing saves, and then hit the save button. And you scene is saved!

Deleting saves

You can also delete saves from the Save menu, or by navigating to garrysmod/data/smh and deleting files there.

Loading

When you want to load your saved frames, you will need to do this individually for all entities. When you have selected an entity with SMH, open the load menu. Select your previously saved scene. You will then see a list of saved entities, identified by their model name or the name they were given in the Properties menu. Select the right entity and then hit load, and the entity should now have all the frames that were saved.

Spawning

In load menu, after you have selected a save, you can press Spawn button which will open the Spawn menu in SMH's main menu. From there you can select a saved entity from the right column, and it will spawn a preview ghost in its position it was recorded on first frame. Clicking spawn button there will spawn that entity, and apply saved keyframes to it. You also can offset entity's position to your viewpoint, while using position of some other saved entity from the left column as a reference point, if they have recorded keyframes with Physical Bones or Rotation and Position modifiers, and adjust its rotation and position and spawn it somewhere else.

Backing up saves

All saves are located in garrysmod/data/smh, so you can back up your saved scenes from there, or move scenes to somewhere else if they take up space in the save list.

Quicksave

It's always good practice to frequently save your scene, as there are many unexpected things that can happen. Garry's mod might crash, SMH might error out, your computer may crash or you have to lock down your house in case of a zombie apocalypse. Saving your scene manually might not be the most ideal thing to do. That's why there's the smh_quicksave command. Bind a key into this command and your scene will be saved with the name quicksave_[your nickname] when you press it.

Settings menu

There are several options you can change in the settings menu: Freeze all will keep all physical bones of a ragdoll frozen when positioning to a frame, even if they were not frozen when the frame was recorded. Don't animate phys bones will disable the animation of physical bones entirely. This can be used for puppeteering while playing a facial animation, for example. This might not be usable in stop motion, so you'd have to use recording software, like OBS Studio. Disable Tweening will disable SMH's automatic tweening between keyframes, which can be useful for blocking animation. Smooth Playback will try to run playback smoother, although it may be more performance heavy. Enable world keyframes will allow world keyframes to execute their commands and keypresses.

Ghosts

Ghosts are static objects that represent previous and next frames of an entity. They are useful for determining where you want to place your prop or ragdoll before recording a frame. You can enable ghosts from the settings menu. Ghost previous frame will display a ghost for the previous frame. Ghost next frame will display a ghost for the next frame. Ghost all entities will display ghosts for all entities that have any frames, and not just the selected entity. Ghost transparency can be used to change the visibility of the ghosts, 0 being invisible and 1 being fully visible.

Onion skinning

Onion skinning will display ghost-like objects representing all frames of an entity. This might be useful to visualize the animation flow of your prop or ragdoll. To use onion skinning, bind a key to command smh_onionskin. You can then toggle onion skinning on and off. The option Ghost all entities in the options menu applies to onion skinning as well, so enabling that will let you see all frames of all entities at the same time.

Physics recorder

Physics recorder menu can be accessed through settings menu, which would allow you to add the selected entity for the physics recorder, set up the settings for the physics recording and toggle the physics recorder.

NOTE: As long as physics recorder is working, you will not be able to select any entity.

That's all!

You can report any bugs on the workshop page. Or you can also give any other feedback, it helps too!