Dynamic blinking animation

[Starberries]

Long story short, I wanted my characters to have blink animations and got tired of having to copy-paste the animation code block for every character. I also wanted them to have a random duration between blinks to make it look more organic. Partial solution was to adapt this code which uses only eyes open/eyes closed frames. This was a lot of brute force and trial and error from an intermediate coder, so any critiques and suggestions on cleanup are welcome. But I figured this might be helpful to someone else out there.

Code: Select all

init python:
    # The dynamic_blink class is the core code for the animation itself
    class dynamic_blink(renpy.display.layout.DynamicDisplayable):
        def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
            self.current_image_index = 0
            self.blink_st = -1.0 # arbitrary number to force normal start

            self.used_images = args
            kwargs.update( {
                '_predict_function' : self.predict_images } )
            super(dynamic_blink, self).__init__( self.get_blink_image, *args, **kwargs )

        def get_blink_image(self, st, at, *args, **kwargs):
            # if time to change image
            if st > self.blink_st:
                self.current_image_index = (self.current_image_index + 1) % len(args)
                # set the next change time based on current image
                if self.current_image_index == 0: # back to open eyes, wait longer
               	   
                    self.blink_st = st + 2.0 + ( renpy.python.rng.random() * 5.0 )
                else: # other frames, shorter delay
                    self.blink_st = st + 0.1 
            return args[self.current_image_index], 0

        def predict_images(self):
            return self.used_images

    # The blinking_animation function will take the character's name as a parameter and use it to automatically fill in the file names
    # This assumes your files are organizes and named as they are below. Alter the strings as needed to fit your organization methods
    def blinking_animation(character):
        return dynamic_blink(
            # Define frames for the animation here. It should be able to take more or less frames
            "chars/{}/{}_eyes_open.png".format(character, character),
            "chars/{}/{}_eyes_half.png".format(character, character),
            "chars/{}/{}_eyes_closed.png".format(character, character),
            "chars/{}/{}_eyes_half.png".format(character, character)
        )

image eileen_blinking = blinking_animation("eileen")

Basically, the code works in two parts. The first is the class dynamic_blink, which is the bulk of the code that handles the animation itself and the random time between blinks/animation loops. By default, the timer should be 2~7 seconds unless I'm worse at reading math equations than I thought.

The last Python chunk the blinking_animation function, takes "character", as in probably the character's name, as a parameter and adds it into a template that matches my folder paths and file naming convention, so that I don't have to write out the entire file name repeatedly when defining the animations. As I mentioned in the code comments, you should be able to add or remove frames without issue, you don't have to stick to the same number of frames I use.

As a bonus, I use the following alternate function in the same init python block for blink animations with filenames that are exceptions to my usual format.

Code: Select all

    def blinking_anim_special(character,*frames):
        return dynamic_blink(
            "chars/{}/{}.png".format(character, frames[0]),
            "chars/{}/{}.png".format(character, frames[1]),
            "chars/{}/{}.png".format(character, frames[2]),
            "chars/{}/{}.png".format(character, frames[1]),
        )

image eileen_red_blinking = blinking_anim_special("eileen","eileen_eyes_open_red","eileen_eyes_half_red","eileen_eyes_closed")

Note that this does require the majority of the filename written in the parameters, but I don't mind it in this case since the number of animations that use this function is a pretty tiny handful, it's just my lazy way of handling outliers. Feel free to adapt this stuff however you need for whatever blinks or other animations you have going on.