ebon aspen
I made a custom FXR with the help of CCCode a bit a go, but i also want to make another change to it
In the video, the FFX has this big buildup before a big flash and it grows to full size and stays like that. I want to make the FXR start "later" in its "animation", just skipping to the part where its already at full size and keeping it static. Any help? I've barely dipped an atom of my toe into FXR editing, and I know what FXR Playground it but im not sure how to utilize it.
iron vortex
This one is probably a bit trickier than you'd think, but it depends on how the animation works.
It's probably best to assume it'll be somewhat easy to start with. In that case, you should try searching for "delay" in the JSON view on the playground. This field controls the time it takes for a node to become active. If you can find a node that has a delay that isn't just 0, then that might be what triggers the second stage of the animation. Changing it to 0 would make it start immediately. The first stage of the animation would still happen at the same time, though. To fix that, you'd probably need to figure out which parts of the effect controls the first stage and then remove those parts.
If there aren't any delayed nodes, then this animation is probably done entirely through animated properties, which might be a lot more complicated
ebon aspen
okay; luckily i found that theres three delayed nodes out of the 21. (i assume theres 21 bc 21 results show up when i search "delay")
so i need to set the delayed ones to 0, then disable the non delayed ones?
iron vortex
Probably just start with removing the delay on the ones with one to see what happens. You don't want to remove all of the ones without a delay, because ones without a delay might still be used to transform the ones you want in some way, or they might also be part of the ones you want
What is the ID of the original FXR? I'm working an update for the playground that has some new tools that might be useful for this. I could use it to look at how this is structured in a much better way
ebon aspen
its originally an fxr from Metyr, its id is 652000
iron vortex
Okay, so this is the structure of the original. Since you added an offset to it, yours will have one basic node extra between the root and everything else. It seems like the delayed nodes are just the radial blurs and that branch in the bottom right, which I'm guessing is the particles and distortion waves that come out in the second stage
I think that black branch is the actual black hole effect. The outer one has this scale modifier, which really kicks in at 1.8 seconds, which lines up with the second stage starting
ebon aspen
so can i make the scale modifier trigger earlier?
iron vortex
You can remove the first keyframe and then subtract 1.8 from the positions of the other two, so they'd be at 0 and 0.2
ebon aspen
like this?
iron vortex
Yeah, and I just noticed the first black node there also has a similar modifier. You'd probably want to do the same to that
Actually, there are a bunch of nodes with this. This might actually be what you need. Just go through all of the "particleModifier" actions and see if they have something similar, and then do this with the ones that do
ebon aspen
theres two nodes that have a scale modifier similar to the others but slightly different. do i mess with these?
iron vortex
You can probably just make that one skip to where the other ones are. The first keyframe needs to stay for that, but its value should be like 25 or something. The position of the second keyframe should be 0.2
I think the branch in the bottom left of that graph I posted is the waves and particles going into the black hole in the first stage, so that should probably be removed. It's the first node in root here, but for you it should be the first child of the first root node child. It's easy to remove if you fold it like this first:
Just to make sure you're getting the right one, it starts like this:
ebon aspen
okay i think i found that node, what do you mean by "folding it"
iron vortex
Collapse it. There's an arrow in the margin to do it
ebon aspen
ohhh, then i just delete that?
iron vortex
Yeah
ebon aspen
alright, everythings saved, ill test it out now
that visual thing with the tree of nodes looks really helpful, thats apart of the update you're working on?
iron vortex
Yeah, it'll be useful for things like this, because you can delete entire branches directly from that view
It's really nice for getting an idea of what different parts of an effect do
ebon aspen
its really nice to see stuff like this become more accessible after all the talks of people going through hell for it. you're doing very great work :)
alright so it looks good except for one thing, theres still a kinda weird delayed flash of light. I'd honestly kinda prefer that be gone alltogether.
iron vortex
That might be the point light source. If you want to get rid of it entirely, then you can look for "type": 609 and remove the node it is part of. If you want to keep the light source, but get rid of the super bright part of it, then you can remove the keyframes it has that make it so bright. There are a few properties that are part of this brightening animation, you can see which keyframes cause it, because at 2 seconds in, the values are all really high compared to the ones surrounding it:
Could just remove these, because the at 2s is the bright one, and the other one is the same as the one before it, so it can be removed too since it wouldn't do anything:
ebon aspen
the bright flash of the light source is now gone, but seems to be a node that still mimics a flash of light.
i also made a quick edit to the light source to make it not have a buildup and it just starts at the light level it gets to
iron vortex
Did you remove those node delays I mentioned first? There's a node here that might be the bright flash, but it's one of those with a delay, so if the delay was removed it should just be at the start of the animation
ebon aspen
yeah i did remove those delays, every delay is 0 right now
iron vortex
Oh, I found it. It's the only node that has an animated RGB multiplier, so you can find it by searching for "rgbMultiplier": {
You could probably do the same thing to this if you don't want to remove the entire node. Just remove the bright flash at 2.2s and subtract 1.8 from all of the positions, and remove any keyframes that would have a negative position
ebon aspen
(im just testing it on the actual spell now, the startup uses the original fxr) 
theres still some sort of light source
oh wait i found it
i was kinda just brute forcing it with looking for things with "position": 2 and editing and unediting them and i found the supposed light source i think
LETSFUCKINGGOOOOOOOOOOOO
thank you so much for the help :)