Visulie ─ A Novel, All-Purpose Animation and Effects Suite

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#1
A slightly long rant about the motivation behind Visulie

Visual effects and animations are two properties that make or break a game. While Roblox offers a variety of animation tools as well as plugins created by the many talented developers on this platform, what has been bugging many developers the most (including me!) is simply the lack of a general-use, pragmatic animation software.

What has been one of the largest (if not the largest) consumer of my time when developing my games is simply creating the 2D and 3D visual effects. Not only do I have to code all the different interactions (which may take hundreds of lines of code!), but you also have to run the game to see how the animation plays out. On top of that, I’m forced to manage an overwhelming number of instances under my animation code, which isn’t very optimal.

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(thanks, Code Stats!)

13 thousand lines of animation code and counting. That’s preposterous!

And this gave me enough motivation to create Visulie. Which I believe (as far as I know), is the first of it’s kind on Roblox.

Visulie is a one-of-a-kind plugin that allows you to animate virtually any Instance, along with the majority of their properties (including ones that can’t be animated using TweenService!). It supports all of the datatypes offered by TweenService, as well as smoothly interpolate datatypes without a built-in lerping method, such as:

As an added bonus, you can also add keyframes for method calls, such as Emit() for ParticleEmitters, and Play() for Sounds.

“Rigging”

Visulie does not use the standard rigging techniques that you may be used to. Instead of using Motor6Ds, Visulie uses the more intuitive approach of parenting, of which BaseParts parented to other BaseParts will have their CFrames transform relative to their parent. Here’s a quick demonstration:

Version Handling

Through the natural evolution of the plugin, expect changes to how data is formatted, as well as the required Visulie version to read the new format. For version handling, make use of the “Scan for Outdated” option:

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If you’ve already bought and used Visulie a few years back, this feature can help you update to the latest version!

Animating

When you create a new file, you might notice an instance called the “Origin”. This part is where all parts will be animated relatively towards. If you animate a part 5 studs away from the origin, that part will be 5 studs away from wherever you decide to play your animation in-game.

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Here, the animation was made exactly where the origin is. Notice how it’s played exactly where you instantiate the animation:

This animation was made 10 studs from the origin. Notice how it’s played exactly 10 studs from where you instantiate the animation:

Exporting/Importing

Animations you create can be exported, as well as imported to edit an existing animation:

Runtime Playback

Through the Visulie Renderer, you can play the exported animations during runtime, supporting many useful animation features such as:

  • Playback speed
  • Framerate
  • Animation events
    …

Here’s the place file shown in the video above:
VisuliePlaybackExample.rbxl (62.0 KB)

GetVisulie LogoButton VisuliePlayer

Your purchase comes with the entire Visulie Suite, which includes the Editor as well as all versions of the Visulie Renderer.

FAQ

Why not MoonAnimator?

Moon Animator is used as an alternative to the built-in editor. Its purpose is more suited to create rigged content, rather than executable content during runtime as runtime playback faces the same limitations as Roblox animation.

Can I share my creations?

Yes! All animations you create from Visulie is your property. You may redistribute all animations you create, as well as the corresponding Visulie Renderer version (not the plugin!).

I’m not hearing any audio in studio, is that a bug?

Currently, plugins are limited to where they’re able to play audio within a studio session. This issue will be immediately fixed once this feature request is resolved. For the time being, you must export and play your animations during runtime to hear your audio play in sync.

If you have any comments, concerns, or general inquiries, please reply to this thread!

22 Likes
Visulie - Dynamic, Data-Driven Animations
Visulie - Dynamic, Data-Driven Animations
#2

This looks cool.

  • Is it supposed to replace MoonAnimator?
  • How many instances and properties does it have support for?
#3

No, this isn’t a replacement for Moon Animator. Moon animator is used to animate rigs made with Motor6Ds, while Visulie animates based on the majority of other Instance properties.

It currently has support for all instances except:

  • physics constraints (excluding attachment)
  • services
  • non-instantiable objects

Supports all properties of associated instances except:

  • non-scriptable/non-accessible properties
  • Parent
  • Name
  • and certain exceptions like “WorldPosition” of an attachment

In the internal data dump, there is around 900 lines of code whitelisting instances and properties, so there’s that.

4 Likes
#4

Does it work in-game? If so, does it export a script, that utilizes TweenService?

#5

Thanks for asking!

I mentioned this in the topic already. See:
Exporting/Importing
Runtime Playback

1 Like
#6

This is really cool, actually!

Btw I’m pretty sure that you can put the type (:: visulie.visulieData) into the animation data module itself, and it should work like normal.

#7

Hey, I’ve thought about doing that but I’ve determined it to not be the best solution. You’d have to require Visulie in the module itself, which isn’t desirable. A static typecast for every module wouldn’t be desirable, either.

#8

Lord oh lord why is such an awesome plugin 10 bucks :sob:
Literally pay to win

#9

This looks sick! Do you believe it’s polished and safe enough for production level games? And if so, how is the performance compared to manually tweening, etc?

#10

Yes, it is production ready. I’m currently transitioning to Visulie files for my own game.

While I haven’t benchmarked the performance, I’m fairly sure the performance is around the same (but possibly slower) than TweenService. This is unavoidable; there are so many features that Visulie provides that you can’t achieve using TweenService.

Sorry :sweat_smile:. These plugins take a heck of a long time to make. The first and second revisions take hundreds of hours cumulatively. I think it’s only fair to earn a little from that.

3 Likes
#11

Yeah makes sense, I’d do the same if i were you.
I guess I’m only saying this to profit off of this message but uhh… following suggestion:

Make a free, lite version that is SUPER restricted, so that people can test your plugin before buying it.
I wont ever spend a cent on roblox plugins but I think others might rather buy a plugin they’ve experienced before than one they have no real information about

#12

I agree that a lite version would be nice, however, that also takes quite a while to make.

Even if I were to make it, what features would it have? A problem lies with the fact that this is an animation plugin with one goal: ease of animating instances. If I remove the animation part (which is literally what the plugin does), all you will get is a ScreenGui. It’s just like trying to remove a side from a square and still calling it a square.

3 Likes
#13

Visulie Renderer versions are formatted as such: a.b.c
a is the interpreter version.
b signifies feature iterations.
c signifies bug iterations.

Visulie Renderer Update 1.1.1

Features

  • Added embedded documentation
  • Added GetRigDependencies() method, which returns an array of the root instances of the animation rig
  • Added new parameter to Destroy(), which allows for the destruction of renderer instances without removing the model
  • Removed Stop() method
  • Added getActiveAnimation(), which returns the current Visulie animation playing on an instance, if it exists
  • Removed the rigDependencies argument for new()
  • Added loadAnimation(), which loads an animation onto the specified rigDependencies. If an animation is already playing on the rig, that animation will be overridden.

Fixes

  • Loading rigs now work properly
#14

I’m loving the plugin so far, it’s really polished and well worth the money. Amazingly done.
I found a visual bug with dragging keyframes. On an animation longer than 60 keyframes it seems to still snap and clamp to 60 keyframes, which is really hard to work with.

Visulie testing.rbxl (63.1 KB)

1 Like
#15

Hey, glad you’re enjoying the plugin! Apologies for that bug. It should be fixed if you update the plugin.

Visulie 1.1.2

Bug fixes

1 Like
#16

can i pay u in robux :sob: :heart: :heart: pls donate or some

#17

This looks really cool, I always wonder why roblox doesn’t have some kind of animator for VFX or anything in general, I mean are we supposed to manually animate everything via code?

I wonder of moonlite can be used to play moon2 files for VFX similar to this resource.

1 Like
#18

I cannot say that there are no alternatives to Visulie. However, Visulie is fully integrated with itself and is the only plugin (that I know of) that intentionally supports this kind of playback in a live game.

There are multiple resources that allow you to play MoonAnimator files. Here are some that I see are more prominent:

I’m not too experienced with any of these, as I’ve never used them before. However, from the looks of it, using alternatives like Moonlite is likely to be much less performant. Since your models need to be loaded in advance to play, it might also feel a bit clunky to work with.

That being said, if you prefer to animate using MoonAnimator, these alternatives could be a better fit for you. I created Visulie to improve my own workflow, as I prefer a streamlined experience that doesn’t rely on external workarounds.

I’ve PM’ed you for further details!

1 Like
#20

Visulie 1.1.3

Bug fixes

  • Fixed a bug where dragging a keyframe onto another keyframe in a keyframe strip with only two keyframes would cause the strip to disappear and trigger an error (as shown below).