Actions

Introduction

The Actions Nodes are primarily used for generating an Animation through a continuous modification of the Transformation Attributes of an Object. They have two Output Pulses:

  • OnStart (►) gets triggered when the Action begins.

  • OnEnd (►) gets triggered when the Action finishes.

These Nodes take as inputs the Object ID of the Object to be modified, the duration of the Action (in seconds), and values to generate the Animation, such as the target value.

The Node name shows which Attribute is modified and which values are set by the user. The first part of the name says which Attribute the Node modifies:

  • Fade modifies Opacity

  • Move modifies Position

  • Rotate modifies Rotation

  • Scale modifies Scale

And the second part of the name says which values are specified by the user:

  • FromTo: The start and end values of the Attribute are set by the user.

  • To: Only the target value of the Attribute is set by the user.

  • By: The values to be added to the current value of the Attribute are set by the user, in the case of Move and Rotate. For Scale, these are the values by which the initial values are multiplied at the end of the Animation.

Then, for instance, the MoveTo Action Node continuously modifies the Position Attribute of an Object until reaching the target value set, creating an Animation in which the Object moves from its current position to the one set in the Node.

Instance ID

Each Action has an Instance ID, which is a unique identifier that can be set with the Create CustomID Node in the Instance ID Input Socket. It is also possible to use an Object ID as Instance ID. The default Instance ID for Actions is 0.

There is one usage example that shows how useful it is to use the Object ID as the Instance ID for an Action: performing a chain of Actions over a set of Objects. In this case, having the Object ID as Instance ID allows the user to distinguish over which Object an Action is being performed.

Let us go over a quick example of this:

Consider three Objects (a rectangle, an ellipse, and an arc) and a chain of two Actions (MoveBy and RotateBy) we would like to perform over these Objects. We construct the Logic in the following way:

  • Build an Array containing the Object IDs of the three Objects.

  • Use a For Each Loop to go over the three elements of the Array.

  • Take the values of the Array outputted by the For Each Loop Node and give them to a sequence of Action Nodes as both the Object ID and Instance ID.

With this, after the Actions have being performed, we are able to use the Object IDs of the Objects. In this case, we print them to the Console.

The Logic for this example is the following:

And the played example:

Interpolation

The method of interpolation used for generating the intermediate values of the modified Object Attribute can be chosen in the Node Attributes. The options are:

Contents

See Also

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