Flipbook Animator Plugin for Marmoset Toolbag 4 & 5

This Marmoset Toolbag plugin will enable you to animate your flipbook sprite sheets with just a few clicks. If you are tired of calculating and keyframing dozens or hundreds of frames and keyframing them manually, over and over again, this script is just for you.

Example Video: Smoke Flipbook
Looping Cloud by Erfan Ghaemian Video: Looped Cloud Flipbook

The script supports uniform and non-uniform textures of all sizes up to 16000x16000 px (capped by NVidia drivers)

Includes:

Flipbook Animator TB5.py Python script, and
Flipbook Animator TB4.py Python script

Installation:

1.  Copy and paste one of the Flipbook Animator.py Python scripts into the User Plugin Folder based on Toolbag version:
   
   Flipbook Animator TB5.py should go into: C:\Users\[Your Username]\AppData\Local\Marmoset Toolbag 5\plugins
   OR
   Flipbook Animator TB4.py should go into: C:\Users\[Your Username]\AppData\Local\Marmoset Toolbag 4\plugins
   
   
2. Either restart Toolbag or refresh the plugins by heading to Edit > Plugins > Refresh
3. Launch the plugin by heading to Edit > Plugins > Flipbook Animator TB4 or TB5

Usage:

1. Make sure you are done with the overall setup of your material. This script keyframes every attribute of the material. So if you want to change, for instance, the roughness value of the material, then you will have to delete those keyframes from the animation timeline manually.
   
   
2. Set up the last frame of your animation timeline to be equal to or greater than the length of your animation, considering the start frame of your animation. For example, if your animation is 64 frames long, and starts at frame 30, then you have to have a timeline that covers frames from 30 to 30+64=94 at the bare minimum.
   
   
3. Select the material you want to apply flipbook animation to. The selection has to be a Material for the script to work.
   
   
4. Select the number of columns(U) and rows(V) of your flipbook sprite sheet.
   
   
5. Set up your start frame by either using the checkbox or manually dialing the frame number into the text box provided. 
   
   
6. Click the "Preview" button to see at what frames your animation will start and end.
   
   
7. Click the "Animate" button.
   
   
8. Select all the keyframes related to "Offset U" and "Offset V" fields of the material in the animation timeline, and set the blending mode to "Step"

Disclaimers:

• The script is designed to work for Marmoset Toolbag 4.06b or above, but may also work with earlier versions of Toolbag 4, for which no support will be provided.
• All playback frames must be within the timeline range for the flipbook to animate properly.
• The script might cause crashes in heavy scenes, especially the ones with high VRAM usage. So animate the flipbooks before dressing the scenes.
• Set the keyframe interpolation to "step" after animation. The script handles this case on the material object, but the interpolation setting does not propagate to material subroutines and their fields.
• Within Toolbag 5, using U and V dimensions that are not powers of two causes slight jitters. That's why any number except for powers of two is not supported for the Toolbag 5 version of the script. Since Toolbag 4 does not have this limitation, there are more options available in the TB4 version of the script.
• Denoting this a second time: Make sure you are done with the overall setup of your material. This script keyframes every attribute of the material. So if you want to change, for instance, the roughness value of the material, then you will have to delete those keyframes from the animation timeline manually.
• I suggest you split the alpha and albedo, as alpha transparency will cause artefacts. Make sure you clearly define which parts of the flipbook will be visible and not in a grayscale image. Transparent .PNG files are automatically padded and might cause issues when ray-traced Depth of Field is enabled.
• Be mindful of the number of rows and columns you are using in your flipbooks if you will be utilizing the ray-traced Depth of Field in your camera settings. Even though you use the maximum texture resolution available(16000x16000px), there is a resolution cap on the transparency channel that clamps the texture size when the ray-traced Depth of Field is enabled.
• The script only works on unlayered materials in Toolbag 5.
• If you have any issues with the product, feel free to send me a message with your purchase reference number.