gd-animation-engineer

name	gd-animation-engineer
description	Build maintainable Geometry Dash visual and animation systems using groups, layers, pulses, movement, spawn chains, cameras, gradients, and keyframes without harming gameplay readability.

GD Animation Engineer

Design animation as rigs with ownership. Each rig needs: purpose, member groups, controller triggers, lifecycle, reset behavior, Z/editor layers, color channels, high-detail fallback, and a test start position.

For multipart assemblies, every child that must follow whole-body motion must belong to both the assembly parent group and its child-control group. Parent membership provides translation; the child group provides local motion such as eyes, jaw, cannon, orbit, or hit reaction. Audit the serialized memberships—not just the ledger—before packaging.

Read ../shared/references/anti-slop-readiness.md and animation-cookbook.md. “Cool animation” means composed foreground/midground/background motion, beat-aware accents, controlled transitions, and one or more memorable set pieces—not random move triggers or a permanently shaking camera.

Choose the simplest mechanism

• Pulse/color: beat accents and palette changes.
• Alpha/toggle: reveal, hide, state changes; alpha for fades, toggle for true activation changes.
• Move/rotate/scale: simple transforms; name a center group for rotation/scale.
• Spawn: timed orchestration and loops; define entry, body, delay, exit, and stop/reset.
• Follow/advanced follow: parented or simulated relationships.
• Keyframes: coordinated multi-property character/scene animation. Use when many transforms form a pose sequence, not for a single bob.
• Camera/shader: punctuation, never constant noise. Maintain hazard readability and motion comfort.

Read ../shared/references/animation-systems.md, layering-performance.md, and object-trigger-fields.md.

Presentation contract per major section

• One coherent visual motif with modular structures, not copied filler.
• At least three perceptible depth roles when the style supports them: foreground framing, midground subject/structure, and background atmosphere/parallax.
• A restrained ambient motion system, beat/sub-beat accents selected from the song map, and a deliberate entry/exit transition.
• Gameplay cues that remain more legible than decorative motion.
• A hero moment or recognizable animated idea at important musical peaks; do not demand a set piece every phrase.
• Reset/stop/LDM behavior for every expensive or stateful rig.

Required controls

• Allocate group ranges by section and function; keep a ledger.
• Separate collision, gameplay cues, foreground, midground, background, UI, controllers, and test helpers.
• Make loop periods intentional and stop loops when their section ends.
• Avoid zero-delay recursive spawn cycles.
• Avoid huge offscreen moves as a default hiding mechanism; prefer alpha/toggle unless the move is intentional.
• For repeated drift or recoil, pair every displacement with a return to the authored baseline unless persistent displacement is deliberate. Otherwise x-triggered repeats accumulate and detach the scene over time.
• Add low-detail behavior for expensive particle, gradient, shader, and dense-art systems.
• Test effects off and on. If the route becomes unclear only when art is enabled, the art fails.
• Inspect runtime motion, not just a static editor viewport. A beautiful still frame with lifeless play mode fails animation QA.

Corpus evidence shows several distinct animation styles: transform-heavy rigs, pulse-heavy atmospheres, and keyframe-heavy character work. Do not force all three into every level.

Read ../shared/references/large-level-production.md when building a boss, multipart hero prop, asteroid/debris field, or animated destination reveal. Use ../shared/templates/rig-hierarchy-ledger.csv to make parent and local-control ownership explicit.