Tool-Reference

Overview

Tool

This tool consists of a viewer section to preview effects and multiple windows to edit the effects' parameters. By editing the parameters in each window, you can create an effect and change its appearance and behavior. By dragging and dropping each window, you can rearrange them as you please, or collapse them into tabs. By selecting "Menu bar -> Window", you can access windows that are not visible in the default view. Also, you can reset all windows back to their default locations.

Effect

With this tool, you create an effect by editing nodes. Nodes have parent-child relationships, where children are influenced by their parents. By utilizing the parent-child relationships, it is possible to create complex effects.

I will explain parent-child relationships using an example. In this example, node 2 is the child of node 1, and node 3 is the child of node 2. An effect 1 particle will be generated from node 1. After a few frames, several effect 2 particles will be generated relative to the position of the effect 1 particle generated from node 1. After a few more frames, several effect 3 particles will be generated relative to the positions of each of the node 2 particles. This is shown in the figure below. In this way, by describing the behavior of the effect through parent-child relationships on the nodes, a much greater variety of effects can be expressed. In this tool, one effect generated based on the parameters within a "node" is called a "particle".

../../_images/overview_en.png

How to operate

Preview

Rotation Click the right mouse button and move the mouse while holding.
Pan Click the middle mouse button or right button + Shift and move the mouse while holding.
Zoom Scroll the mouse wheel or right button + Control to zoom in and out.

How to input a value

A value can be entered from the keyboard by left-clicking a text entry box with the mouse.

Left-click and drag a text entry box to change the value gradually.

../../_images/input_value.png

How to input a color

In addition to the text box, the color can be entered by left-clicking the color field with the mouse.

../../_images/input_color_basic.png

Left-click and drag a color field to copy the value to another color field.

../../_images/input_color.png

Node Tree

In the node tree, you can edit the nodes that compose the effect. You can right-click to add or delete a node.

You can drag & drop nodes to reorder them.

You can click on the eye icon to toggle the display of nodes. You can shift and click at the same time to toggle display, including child nodes.

../../_images/node_tree.png

Panels (Windows)

There are very few panels (windows) available for editing the parameters you create for your effects. If you select "Window" from the menu bar, you will see a list of windows that can be displayed. If you select it, the window will appear.

You can move the displayed window by moving it while left-clicking the window's menu bar.

You can also add a window to another panel by overlapping it with the square that appears while moving it.

../../_images/DockPanel_Panel.png

You can also add to the tabs by dragging and dropping them between the tabs. (If you have a single panel of tab, drag & drop them onto the tab.)

../../_images/DockPanel_Tab.png

File Format

An effect is saved in a file with "efkefc" format. This file can be editted and played with a runtime in a game. Until 1.4 there were efkproj and efk, but now efkproj and efk are read-only.

Command Line

When starting Effekseer from the command line, you can change the behavior of Effekseer by adding arguments. For example, you can convert ".efkproj" files to ".efk" without activating the Effekseer GUI. By combining this with a script, you can batch convert effect files in any folder at once.

Command Line

-cui

Start up in CUI mode

-in *

* open and launch

-o *

Save as *

-e *

Output in standard format to *

-m *

Set the magnification ratio of the effect when outputting in standard format to *