.ani Viewing Tool

[Ramen2X]

A few months back, I began researching .ani in hopes of cracking it wide open, which would ultimately allow for the format to be converted for use in modern 3D animation software like Blender or 3DS Max. While we're not quite there yet , we have come to understand a lot more about the format than we did before, and we can successfully parse and print a good amount of information from it.

I have created a tool based on the majority of this research named LEGOAniView that can parse an .ani and print information about it's actors and the animation data associated with them. It can read and output position data as well as rotation data (in quaternions, with an option to convert to Euler angles which may be easier for some to read). My hope is to eventually integrate this code into a library that can be used with a modding tool with a broader scope, but for now it is presented as a standalone tool.

The tool's source code is available on GitHub here: https://github.com/Ramen2X/LEGOAniView

[Hanzo]

Whilst I know this post is aimed at Lego Island but PlayStation Home also uses .ani files for some of its animations. Would this work with that too? (I mean considering Lego Island came out in 1997 and PlayStation Home came out in 2008 I doubt they’re even remotely similar but still good to ask)

[MattKC]

I think you can safely assume it's a completely unrelated format; Mindscape developed this format in-house and never publicly released any engine code, so there's no reason PlayStation Home would have used it too. "ani" was just a logical file extension for a lot of companies' animation formats, it's also the extension of animated cursors in Windows.

[Hanzo]

Ah so it’s the same scenario of how Home used MDL files for it’s models, but it was it’s own MDL file that wasn’t close to the same format from Source engine games. The only difference is that Home’s MDL files can be exported to FBX and OBJ now but Home’s ani files still remain uncracked to this day, and since this is about animation’s like Home’s ani files are also animations I thought they came from a similar or even the same tool but maybe Lego Island using an old version or something.

Anyways should probably move the Home side of this to a different thread and return to this being about Lego Island.