Animation Importing & Exporting¶

This guide will assume you have at least some understanding of animating in Blender.

Info

This guide uses the following tools:

Setting Up¶

First, download the required tools and extract them. Open Blender and go to Edit > Preferences. Click on Add-ons, and then Install.... Browse to the FrontiersAnimDecompress folder, and install each of the 4 plugins in this directory, then minimise Blender.

Extracting the Animation Files¶

Locate the pac file that contains the animations you want to change. For sonic's animations, look for raw\character\sonic.pac. First, make sure you create a copy of the pac file of your choice in a folder somewhere so you don't accidentally replace your game files. Drag and drop the pac file onto HedgeArcPack.exe to extract the file into a folder.

Conversion¶

Open the newly created folder and find the animation you want to change. These animation files have the extension .anm.pxd. Drag and drop the .anm.pxd file onto FrontiersAnimDecompress.exe. This will create a new file with the extension .anm.pxd.outanim.

Importing the Animation¶

Open Blender again, and go to File > Import, then select Hedgehog Engine (.model) and browse for your model file.

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If you don't know how to get your model, first watch the Model Import Tutorial

After importing, select the Armature and go to File > Import, and this time select Hedgehog Engine Compressed (.outanim), and browse for your .outanim file we created in the previous step. You should now see the animation within Blender!

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If you don't know how to edit the animation, please look for a Blender tutorial to learn the basics in order to continue. The animation process is not specific to Sonic Frontiers.

Exporting the Animation¶

When you have finished making your changes to the animation, go to File > Export and select Hedgehog Engine Compressed (.outanim), then browse for somewhere to save your file. You may overwrite the .outanim file you imported if you like. You may close Blender now.

Finishing Up¶

Drag and drop the newly exported .outanim onto FrontiersAnimDecompress.exe to create a new .anm.pxd containing your animation. Rename this file to be exactly the same as the original file you decompressed. If you haven't already, place it back in it's pac folder, and replace the existing file.

Now drag the pac folder onto HedgeArcPack.exe to repack the file, which you can then use in your mod!