Flipdot

A Godot 4 plugin that makes animations look like stop motion — in the editor and at runtime.

Flipdot provides a FlipdotPlayer node that you add as a child of any AnimationPlayer. It applies FPS-capped, frame-by-frame playback to the target player without replacing or modifying it — making it work even in instanced scenes where the AnimationPlayer is not directly editable.

Installation

1. Copy the addons/flipdot folder into your project.
2. Open Project → Project Settings → Plugins.
3. Enable Flipdot.

Usage

Add a FlipdotPlayer node as a child of any AnimationPlayer.

AnimationPlayer
└── FlipdotPlayer   ← add this

If no target is set, FlipdotPlayer automatically controls its parent. You can also set the Target property to point at any AnimationPlayer in the scene — useful when the player lives inside a non-editable instanced scene.

Select the FlipdotPlayer node to see its controls in the inspector:

Interpolation modes

• Nearest — Snaps directly to keyframe values with no blending. The classic stop motion / paper cutout look.
• Linear — Smooth linear interpolation between keyframes, updated at the target FPS.
• Cubic — Smooth cubic easing, updated at the target FPS.

Original track interpolation is automatically restored when disabled.

Instanced scenes

Because FlipdotPlayer is a plain Node, you can add it to a scene even when the AnimationPlayer is inside a sub-scene with non-editable children. Add FlipdotPlayer somewhere accessible in your own scene and point its Target property at the AnimationPlayer inside the sub-scene.

MyScene
├── Character (instanced, non-editable)
│   └── AnimationPlayer    ← target this
└── FlipdotPlayer          ← lives here, Target = Character/AnimationPlayer

How it works

FlipdotPlayer is a @tool node. When stop motion is enabled it sets the target AnimationPlayer to manual process mode, then uses its own _process to advance the animation at the target FPS — accumulating real delta time and stepping forward only when a full stop-motion frame has elapsed. When disabled, the original process mode is restored.

Because the node is @tool, the same code runs in both the editor preview and at runtime. No autoloads, no metadata, no hidden state.

Animation library support

Works with both inline animations and imported AnimationLibrary assets. AnimationPlayer.get_animation_list() enumerates all animations regardless of source, so interpolation overrides apply everywhere.

Notes

• Interpolation changes are non-destructive — original track values are saved in memory and restored when stop motion is disabled.
• Disabling the plugin removes the custom type registration. Existing FlipdotPlayer nodes will continue to work (the script is still present) but won't appear under the custom type name until re-enabled.