Animator Import

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• Godot Animator Importer Plugin
  A collection of [[https://godotengine.org/][Godot]] importer scripts for files saved from the classic graphics
  application formerly known as Autodesk Animator (also Ani Pro, PJ Paint; called
  simply Animator in this document). More background information can be found
  [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodesk_Animator][on wikipedia]], full Animator [[https://github.com/AnimatorPro/Animator-Pro][source code is on GitHub]], as is the [[https://github.com/AnimatorPro/Animator-Pro/downloads][download page]].
  The current version was tested in Godot 3.2.3, Godot 3.3.4, and Godot 3.4.1.

[[godotimportscreenshot.png]]

** Supported File Formats
Importers for the following file formats are
included in this addon. For technical details about
these file formats see [[https://github.com/AnimatorPro/Animator-Pro/blob/master/src/V/FILES.DOC][this file]]. Unless otherwise
specified all graphics are in 8-bit indexed color
using a palette of 256 18-bit colors.

*** FLIC
Animations imported to Godot textures. The importer can be configured
to only import a limited range of frames, and to cut out
only a smaller rectangle of each frame. Background color can be
rendered as transparent or not. The created texture will be smaller
than specified if that is required to make it evenly divisable by
the animation size, to make it possible to animate easily using
Godot's built-in frames support.

Note that very long animations are not possible yet since the texture size is
limited by graphics hardware, so longer animations have to be split up into
shorter files. Long fullscreen animations are probably better to convert to some
more modern format supported by Godot for displaying as video rather than
imported as a sprite anyway though.

Supports older FLI files (from original Autodesk Animator) as well
as newer FLC files (from Autodesk Animator Pro).
*** CEL
You can save the current rectangular clipboard ("cel") contents
to an uncompressed image file in CEL format. It can be up to
320x200 pixels. Internally in Godot they will appear as a PNG-compressed
texture. Background pixels can be set to transparent or not.

The location of a cel copied in Animator is saved in the CEL file,
but that information is not used by the importer. Only the size,
palette, and image data is imported.

(NOTE: CEL-files saved from Animator Pro are actually small FLC-files,
not at all the same as old Animator CEL, and are not supported by
this importer.)
*** PLY
Polygons drawn in Animator can be saved to these simple binary files.
This importer creates a PackedScene containing a Path2D node. Coordinates
are all integers in the range 0,0 to 319,199. Like an extremely
simple and not very useful vector image file. Possibly more useful
to read in from a script and use for path-finding or collision
polygons (somehow?). Or possibly not useful at all.

*** COL
This is a 256 color palette. It is imported as a texture in Godot.
It is not known what these can be used for. It is possible to
configure the number of rows and columns to use to lay out the
colors (1 pixel per color).

*** MSK
A 320x200 bitmap ("mask") used in Animator to mask out certain parts
of the screen while drawing. They are imported as Bitmap resources
in Godot. What can these be used for?

*** PIC
These are still images saved from Animator. The default
save-format is GIF, but here only the uncompressed PIC
format is supported. To save to PIC the file must be
named with a PIC extension (it is a semi-hidden feature).
This is actually the same file format (and importer) as a CEL, only
that it always covers the entire 320x200 screen.

** Notes on running Animator
Animator only runs in MSDOS, so you need something like [[https://www.dosbox.com/][DOSBox]] or [[https://www.freedos.org/][FreeDOS]] to run
it. When running Animator on a desktop computer alongside Godot it
is convenient to run it in DOSBox and to have the DOSBox
preferences file set up to launch Animator with the current
directory mounted. The following command does that (given that
you first have copied the AA.EXE binary to the current directory;
presumably the Godot project directory):

#+BEGIN_SRC sh
dosbox -fullscreen
-c "mount d pwd"
-c "d:"
-c "AA.EXE"
-c "exit"
#+END_SRC

Probably save that to a shell script. Something similar should
be possible in a Windows BAT-file.

You may want to add AA.EXE and AAT to /.gitignore/. AAT
is the directory used by Animator to save temporary files. It
also contains all current state, so Animator can pick up exactly
where you left off. All configuration made inside of the application
is also saved there, so by launching Animator in different Godot
project directories you can have individual configuration for
different projects.
** Notes on Importing Image to Animator
Animator only supports the ancient GIF87 format, not
GIF89 that is what any GIF file you find in the wild
today is. Images must be 320x200 pixels.
Animator ships with a CONVERT.EXE tool
that can be used to fix that, and it can also convert
from some old file formats like PCX and TGA.

A quick way to get images prepare an image to open
with Animator is to use [[https://www.imagemagick.org][ImageMagick]]. Filenames given
to ImageMagick tools can be prefixed with a file type.
A command-line to crop (or expand) an image to a 320x200
GIF that Animator can open looks something like this:
#+BEGIN_SRC shell
convert infile.png -background black -extent 320x200 GIF87:outfile.gif
#+END_SRC
** License
See [[LICENSE.txt]].