Anyone with the need or curiosity to view any type of AM file format in a structured collapsable tree view should download Jedit and then get the "Sidekick" plugin along with XML plugin. It allows you to view the file structure of AS files by clicking elements in a "tree" to collapse and expand those elements. You can click on any element in the tree and it jumps to that spot in the file. It's amazing to look at the AM file format like this. It makes it so much more manageable and easy to understand.

-vern

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Being able to record macros in jEdit is very helpful as well...I use it quite a bit.

This thing is cool as HECK!!!

I had to take ONE pose with 23 bone constraints and break it up into 23 separate poses. Can you do that easily in AM? No sir. Nope. Nyet. Nadda. Not easily. I used this gizmo to figure out exactly where in the file format I needed to make changes for doing this and was able to copy out each bone constraint and place it into a new pose. There are two places where poses are listed. The first one is for the model relationships "listing". The spot where you create folders to group poses. Then the second spot where the actual relationships are stored. I kind of knew this but being able to see it clearly and ONLY those two spots is fantastic. I even put in a new pose "folder" for all of those poses. Didn't have to open AM once during this process. When I was finished I opened it in AM and BANG ON! All my constraints were each in their own pose. Now I can use AM to create new poses that mix and match those poses into pose groups. That's a little easier done in AM. Not so tedious.

It is so cool to just click on each "node" in the AM file format and see exactly how it's formatted and constructed for easier editing like this.

-vern

Speaking of trees, this might be handy in my tree-growth animation project. Might help me work out a better way to build and set up the tree model with some automation once I see how it looks in the A:M file.

Thanks for the tip!

I've discovered that the XML mode for AM doesn't work so well. The best format is HTML. It works much better. In Jedit you can change what file extensions are associated with a mode. So you just add all the AM file extensions to the HTML edit modes and when you open them they are parsed automatically. This has been a huge help for me. The other cool thing is that this also allows for "auto completion". You can check for bad formatting as well. If a file is corrupted this can help you spot the problem section and potentially fix it

I would like to examine these edit modes a bit more. Possibly come up with one specific to the AM format by modifying the HTML version. It's based on the tags but since AM doesn't have tags that match HTML it is only visual and for tree navigation. If I edited this mode and actually added in definitions of the "real" AM tags it could be much more useful.

-vern