Actions in Coppola

Table of Contents

1. Adding a New Action

2. Editing Existing Actions

   1. Renaming an Action

   2. Adjusting Action Parameters

3. Deleting Actions

Creating a New Action

You can add new actions in addition to the list of existing actions that comes with every Coppola project.

1. Navigate to the Actions tab in your Coppola project. Click + Create action.

1. Give your action a name. You can add a description, but it's not a mandatory field. All actions will have an instigator, or the character responsible for taking the action.

2. Add the parameters necessary for the action to be carried out properly. In the example above mop would require a surface, i.e. The barkeep mops the floor. You may have actions that require more than one parameter, like clean

   1. There are 3 unique parameter types to choose from:

      1. Role: most often used when one character is interacting with another during an action. In existing Bitpart actions, the role type is often labeled as target. For example the barkeep (instigator) speaks to (action) the bar patron (target)

      2. Prop Type: used to distinguish which prop types are used by a character during the content. In existing Bitpart actions the prop type parameter is labeled as either an object or a surface. The difference lies in the action blueprint used in Unreal.

      3. Utterance: this parameter type is used alongside speak to . It denotes the dialogue a character says.

3. Once you have all the necessary parameters, hit Create. The new action has been added to your project and can now be used when making content!

   1. In order for the content to be usable in Unreal, you'll need to ensure the new action exists there as well.

If you add a new action to a project, it will not be automatically added to your other projects. To use the action elsewhere, you'll need to add it manually.

Editing Existing Actions

If you need to edit an existing action in Coppola, there are two different workflows: renaming an action and adjusting the parameters.

Renaming an Action

If you click on the three dots next to an action, you'll see a menu of options appear. The edit option only lets you rename the action.

Adjusting Action Parameters

Currently, if you need to adjust the parameters on an existing action, you'll have to create a new one. To do so follow these steps:

1. Create a new action

2. Delete the old version of the action

   1. This step requires you find and replace existing usages of the old action before you can delete it.

Deleting Actions

If the action you're deleting is not used in any content within a project, click the three dots next and choose Delete.

For actions that are used throughout a project already, you'll need to either remove the action from each task method OR find and replace it with a new action. If you click the three dots next to the action and choose View usages the modal above will appear.

Copy the link to the step where the action is used and open it in a new tab. You can then delete the step entirely or edit the step to use your new action.