multiple instances and animation

[Rick]

I'm trying to figure out the best way to make it so multiple instances of an animated model that all start out with the "idle" animation don't all play in sync. I need a way to make them start on a random frame inside the range of the idle animation. They only need to do this at startup. When the game is running and I set it to "idle" they should start at the beginning.

[Josh]

The animation state between instances are not related, so I don't see any problems here.

[Rick]

Right, but if I default the starting animation for an object to be "idle", then place 5 objects in my scene, they will all start out the same and do the exact same movements. I want them to be idle, but if they start out at different idle frames it makes it looks less like they are synchronized swimmers. Just wonder a good way to do this is all.

[Niosop]

Just set the frame no to some random frame (math.random(start_frame, end_frame) or similar should help), then in your Update instead of animating based on apptime, animate based on apptime-lastframetime.

[TylerH]

niosop tells you the truth. This is how I handle weapons going from idle animation to moving animation and back. Basically, everytime the animation state changes I reset the weapon.LastAppTime value, so that the animations play from where I want them, when I want them to.