Animations and VFX
How it works
When an animation is required to play on an actor an "animationId" is used to define both the animation that is played as well as the particle effect that may accompany it. This "id" is actually a bitpacked value in the following format:
VFX Categories
| VFX Number | Animation Number | VFX Category | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
- Animation Number: The specific file number to play within the animation category folder (see below).
- VFX Category Number: Sets the VFX folder category that will be play from.
- VFX Number: The specific file number to play within the VFX category folder (see below).
If you look inside your FFXIV Install Folder/client/ folder, you will notice a chara and vfx folder. The former contains model and animation info for every pc, monster, and object model. Based on the actor model and it's state,
an animation category folder path will be made. For example a Hyur male in a passive state standing will load animation files in thise folder FINAL FANTASY XIV/client/chara/pc/c001/act/cmn/em1/base/. The animation number provided matches the numbered
files in this folder. Therefore we can deduce all possible animations for a specific set of state.
The particle effect portion is stored in the VFX folder. Unlike animations, the category to load from is not based on state and rather is provided. See below for the mapping between the category number and folder name. For example category 5
is provided with the VFX number 30. This means the particle effect FINAL FANTASY XIV/client/vfx/itm/0030 will be loaded and played along with the animation.
Note that some animations/vfx were not implemented or required to be paired with each other (such as the throw snowball animation and snowball effect). Animations may also include sound effects as well.
Animation Categories
VFX Categories
| Category Number | Category Folder | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | mgk | Magic effects. |
| 2 | sys | |
| 3 | etc | |
| 4 | lib | |
| 5-9 | itm | Item effects, unknown why it spans 5 to 9. |
| 10 | kao | |
| 11 | gl1 | |
| 12 | gl2 | |
| 13 | gl3 | |
| 1 | cbi | |
| 1 | abl | Ability effects. |
| 15 | pop | Spawning effects. |
| 16 | cft | Crafting effects (success/fail/etc). |
| 17 | btl | |
| 18 | wsc | |
| 19 | wss | |
| 20 | pic | |
| 21 | liu | |
| 22 | lin | |
| 23 | lif | |
| 24 | lil | |
| 25 | atk | |
| 33 | wss |
