Basic User Instructions (Unpacked Game):
- Run application.
- Go to
File
->Open
- Load a .anibnd or .anibnd.dcx.
- Enter the information required, such as game executable, ModEngine folder (if applicable), etc.
- Select where the unpacked ANIBND should be saved (the "project directory").
- Select an animation ID on the left pane
- Drag some events around or otherwise mess with things (try the bottom-right pane for editing the highlighted event)
- (Optional) Play with the model/animation viewer pane on the top-right.
- (Optional) Play with the options in the menu bar.
- Hit Ctrl+S to save.
- Make sure your game is setup to load the edited loose ANIBND file. This is more of a general Souls modding thing that is too specific to cover here.
Basic User Instructions (Packed Game):
- Run application.
- Go to
File
->Open From Packed Game Data Archives...
- Enter the information required, such as game executable, ModEngine folder (if applicable), etc.
- Select which ANIBND/CHRBND you would like to use.
- Select where the unpacked ANIBND should be saved (the "project directory").
- Select an animation ID on the left pane
- Drag some events around or otherwise mess with things (try the bottom-right pane for editing the highlighted event)
- (Optional) Play with the model/animation viewer pane on the top-right.
- (Optional) Play with the options in the menu bar.
- Hit Ctrl+S to save.
- Make sure your game is setup to load the edited loose ANIBND file. This is more of a general Souls modding thing that is too specific to cover here.
About DS Anim Studio:
- Edits the TimeAct Editor files of Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, and Sekiro. These files control everything that happens on a specific frame of an animation, such as:
- Activating invulnerability frames.
- Parry windows
- Applying an "SpEffect" (special temporary statuses such as ring effects, poisoning, buffs, AI triggers, etc)
- Allowing animation cancelling
- Setting the flag for YOU DIED and respawning
- Creating "SFX" / "FFX" (both refer to the exact same files: visual effects)
- Playing sound effects such as footsteps, sword swooshes, etc.
- Invoking an attack behavior (does damage to opponent, drains stamina from player, etc all in one event)
- Invoking a "bullet" (projectile) behavior (fires projectile, drains stamina from player, etc all in one event)
- Invoking a "common" behavior (like attack behaviors but for simpler things such as falling on someone's head causing stagger)
- Creating motion blur on weapon swings
- Setting the opacity of a character (used for getting summoned into other worlds, dying, etc)
- Setting attack aim tracking speed of a character
- Playing a "RumbleCam" file (relative screen movement e.g. Smough's footsteps shaking screen)
- Playing additional animation layers (e.g. all of Gwyn's animations have events to play his clothes-blowing-in-wind animation layered on top of the other animations)
- Adjusting model render masks (showing/hiding specific parts of characters)
- Many more that we haven't even figured out yet.
- Shows an actual physical graph full of events represented as boxes.
- Snaps to 30-fps increments just like the vanilla files do.
- Allows you to add new events to animations by right-clicking (if a template is loaded).
- Allows you to delete events by highlighting them and pressing the Delete key.
- Allows you to modify the parameters passed to each event (click an event to highlight it, then the parameters appear in the pane on the right side of the window)
- Has full undo/redo functionality with Ctrl+Z/Ctrl+Y
- Has full copy/paste functionality:
- Ctrl+C: Copy
- Ctrl+V: Paste at Mouse Cursor
- Ctrl+Shift+V: Paste In-Place (keeps original start/end times, useful for copying between animations)
- Edits the .anibnd or .anibnd.dcx files of the games directly. No need to use BND rebuilders.
Breakdown of Game Support:
Game |
Edit Support |
Events Mapped / Identified |
Anim Viewer Support |
Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition |
Yes |
Lots of them |
Yes |
Dark Souls Remastered |
Yes |
Lots of them |
Sort of*... |
Dark Souls II |
No |
No |
No (Never) |
Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin |
No (may change in the future) |
No |
No (Never) |
Dark Souls III |
Yes |
Lots of them |
Yes |
Bloodborne |
Yes |
Lots of them |
Yes |
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice |
Yes |
Lots of them |
Yes |
Elden Ring |
Yes |
Lots of them |
Yes |
* For DS1R/Sekiro/Elden Ring, an animation downgrade process is no longer needed.
System Requirements (End Users):
- Windows 7 SP1/8.1/10/11 (64-bit only)
- .NET Desktop Runtime 6.0 (x64)
- A DirectX 11 Compatible Graphics Device, even if you're just modding DS1: PTDE
- Note: even though Elden Ring uses DirectX 12, DS Anim Studio still uses DirectX 11.
System Requirements (Developers):
- Windows 7 SP1/8.1/10/11 (64-bit only)
- Visual Studio 2022
- .NET 6.0 SDK (Windows x64)
- A DirectX 11 Compatible Graphics Device, even if you're just modding DS1: PTDE
- Note: even though Elden Ring uses DirectX 12, DS Anim Studio still uses DirectX 11.
Developer Instructions:
- Clone repository (use
git clone --recursive
).
- Ensure that all NuGet packages are installed (should in theory do it on its own now).
Build Solution
should succeed.
Special Thanks
- TKGP - Made some discoveries about the TAE format + made SoulsFormats, which this application depends on.
- Pav - Tons and tons of TAE events mapped across all the games.
- Katalash - Much help with animation file understanding.
- PredatorCZ - Reverse engineered Havok Spline-Compressed Animation entirely.
- Horkrux - Reverse engineered the header and swizzling used on non-PC platform textures.
- StaydMcButtermuffin - Many hours of helping me write and debug the shaders + reversing some basic Dark Souls 3 shaders to aid in the process. He also helped me understand Sekiro and Elden Ring shaders for the new versions of the application.
Libraries Utilized
- A slightly modified version of TKGP's SoulsFormats library, currently just included in this repo instead of its own thing.
- Newtonsoft Json.NET
- An edited version of MonoGame Framework where I added support for newer texture types.
- A small portion of HavokLib, specifically the spline-compressed animation decompressor, adapted for C#
- A small portion of Horkrux's copy of my fork of Wulf's BND Rebuilder, specifically the headerization and deswizzling of PS4 and PS3 textures, adapted for C# and modified to load the texture directly into MonoGame instead of save to a file.