Animation Reference — Mesh Craft Docs

Overview

MeshCraft supports keyframe animations via named actions. Each action contains channels, and each channel animates one scalar property of one named object over time using keyframes.

Complete Example

<actions>
  <action name="Bounce" duration="2.0" loop="true">
    <channel target="BouncingBox" property="position.y">
      <keyframe time="0.0" value="0.0" interp="cubic">
        <handle_left  dt="-0.2" dv="0.0"/>
        <handle_right dt=" 0.2" dv="2.0"/>
      </keyframe>
      <keyframe time="1.0" value="3.0" interp="cubic">
        <handle_left  dt="-0.2" dv="2.0"/>
        <handle_right dt=" 0.2" dv="-2.0"/>
      </keyframe>
      <keyframe time="2.0" value="0.0" interp="linear"/>
    </channel>
  </action>

  <action name="Spin" duration="3.0" loop="true">
    <channel target="SpinningSphere" property="rotation.y">
      <keyframe time="0.0"  value="0.0"   interp="linear"/>
      <keyframe time="3.0"  value="360.0" interp="linear"/>
    </channel>
  </action>

  <action name="Flash" duration="2.0" loop="true">
    <channel target="FadingPlane" property="visible">
      <keyframe time="0.0" value="1.0" interp="step"/>
      <keyframe time="0.5" value="0.0" interp="step"/>
      <keyframe time="1.0" value="1.0" interp="step"/>
    </channel>
  </action>
</actions>

action attributes

Attribute	Type	Default	Description
`name`	string	—	Unique clip name
`duration`	float	`1.0`	Clip length in seconds
`loop`	boolean	`false`	Loop when end is reached

channel attributes

Attribute	Description
`target`	Name of the scene object (`Mc3Object.name`) to animate.
`property`	Which property to animate (see table below).

keyframe attributes

Attribute	Type	Description
`time`	float	Time in seconds (keyframes sorted ascending on load)
`value`	float	Property value at this time
`interp`	`linear`\|`step`\|`cubic`	Interpolation to the next keyframe

For interp="cubic", optional child elements specify tangent handles (offsets from the keyframe's (time, value)):

<handle_left  dt="-0.2" dv="0.0"/>   <!-- in-tangent -->
<handle_right dt=" 0.2" dv="1.5"/>   <!-- out-tangent -->

Animatable Properties

Property name	Unit	glTF export
`position.x/y/z`	world units	translation VEC3
`rotation.x/y/z`	degrees	quaternion VEC4
`scale.x/y/z`	factor	scale VEC3
`visible`	0=false, ≥0.5=true	not exported
`deform.x/y/z`	factor	not exported
`material.baseColor.r/g/b/a`	0–1	not exported
`material.roughness`	0–1	not exported
`material.metallic`	0–1	not exported
`material.emissive.r/g/b`	0–1	not exported

glTF Export Notes

Position, rotation, and scale channels are exported as glTF animations[].
Per-component channels (e.g., position.y only) are merged into VEC3/VEC4; non-animated components fall back to the base transform value.
Cubic Bézier channels are sampled at 30 fps and exported as LINEAR interpolation (glTF has no native cubic Bézier).
visible, deform.*, and material.* channels have no glTF equivalent and are silently skipped.

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