What exactly means Actor Animation > random?

[Alexx31]

Hello, a very simple question:

I'm not sure, what kind of randomization the actor animation does.

If I have a looping sequence of 100 frames and Random is set on 100,
so does it mean, it plays randomly from every possible start frame within the loop? (each actor randomly a different start frame)
Or does 50 mean the same? (with +/-50)

I just can see some differences, between 50 and 100 although I would think as soon as the value is higher than the loop length it should randomly play from any start point.

And offset is for sure only to use, if the animation frame range should be moved. So I leave it untouched at 0 when I use loops.

Timing:
when every time a new actor is coming through a repeater, I would leave it just at Event Entry

Thanks
   

[tyFlow]

The math is basically this:

Code:

start frame = (offset + (offsetVariation * (random, 0, 1)))
start frame %= sequence length //modulus

So if you have offset variation set to 100, the start frame should be anywhere from 0-100 for particles. If you set your offset variation to be greater than the sequence length, the value will be clamped to the sequence length using a modulus operation (so an offset of 120 in a 100 frame sequence will return a frame value of 20)

[Alexx31]

Thanks, very good explanatory file!

I haven't been aware, that any kind of animation can be used this way (actually logical, but all typical examples I have seen so far were of course about animated rigged actors).