EffectViewer

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EffectViewer is a cross-platform Avalonia tool for inspecting, editing, and staging effect assets. It can organize effect resources into projects, preview them with OpenGL/WebGL, and run Lua-powered ShowCase scripts that combine reanimations, particles, trails, and simple drawing commands in one scene.

What It Can Do

• Create, rename, delete, import, export, and reopen EffectViewer projects.
• Import individual resources or whole resource folders.
• Preview image atlases and edit image IDs, rows, columns, and frame selection.
• Inspect and edit reanimation, particle, and trail definitions.
• Edit reanimation tracks, frames, transforms, tween metadata, and timeline selection.
• Preview particle emitters, float parameter tracks, particle fields, and trail curves.
• Write and run Lua ShowCase scripts for animated effect scenes.
• Use English or Simplified Chinese UI text, plus custom JSON language files.
• Run on Desktop, Windows, and Browser targets, with Android and iOS project shells included.

Quick Start

Requirements

• .NET SDK that supports net10.0 and net10.0-browser.
• The Windows publishing host targets net10.0-windows.
• Desktop OpenGL support for the desktop app.
• Optional platform SDKs when building mobile targets:
  • Android SDK for EffectViewer.Android
  • Xcode/iOS simulator tooling for EffectViewer.iOS

Run The Desktop App

dotnet run --project EffectViewer.Desktop/EffectViewer.Desktop.csproj

Build Desktop And Browser

dotnet build EffectViewer.Desktop/EffectViewer.Desktop.csproj
dotnet build EffectViewer.Windows/EffectViewer.Windows.csproj
dotnet build EffectViewer.Browser/EffectViewer.Browser.csproj

The full solution includes Android and iOS projects:

dotnet build EffectViewer.slnx

If Android SDK is not configured, the full solution build can fail on EffectViewer.Android. Build Desktop or Browser directly when you only need the main editor.

Try The Sample Project

A ready-to-import sample is included at:

Samples/QuickStartShowcase.zip

To try it in the app:

1. Run the desktop app.
2. Choose Project -> Import Project Zip.
3. Select Samples/QuickStartShowcase.zip.
4. Open quickstart_showcase from the project tree.
5. Click Run in the ShowCase editor.

To inspect the manifest and Lua script directly, unzip Samples/QuickStartShowcase.zip first.

Project Layout

EffectViewer/           Shared Avalonia UI, view models, rendering and runtime code
EffectViewer.Desktop/   Desktop app host
EffectViewer.Windows/   Windows publishing host
EffectViewer.Browser/   Browser/WebAssembly app host
EffectViewer.Android/   Android app host
EffectViewer.iOS/       iOS app host
Samples/                Importable sample projects
docs/lua_api.en-US.md   Lua ShowCase scripting reference

Supported Resource Types

EffectViewer projects use a project.effectproj.json manifest and can reference:

• Images: .png, .jpg, .jpeg, .bmp, .gif, .webp, .tga
• Reanimations: .reanim, .reanim.compiled
• Particles: .xml, .xml.compiled
• Trails: .trail, .trail.compiled
• ShowCases: .lua

ShowCase Scripts

ShowCases are Lua scripts that run inside the current project. A script can create project resources:

local body = scene.reanim("sample_reanim", 400, 300)
local fire = scene.particle_system("fire_burst", 420, 280)
local slash = scene.trail("sword_slash", 0, 0)

It can also draw directly:

local context = {}

function context:draw(g, elapsed, frame)
    g:reset()
    g:set_color(255, 128, 64, 220)
    g:fill_rect(120, 120, 180, 64)
end

scene.regist(context)

See docs/lua_api.en-US.md for the full scripting API.

Development Notes

• Package versions are centralized in Directory.Packages.props.
• Product version metadata starts at 0.1.0 in Directory.Build.props; keep app package display versions and CHANGELOG.md in sync when cutting a release.
• The shared UI and runtime target net10.0; the Windows publishing host targets net10.0-windows; the browser host targets net10.0-browser.
• Desktop, Windows, and Browser builds are good smoke tests for most shared code.
• Run the QuickStart smoke test before release candidates.
• Use the release checklist when tagging a release or creating GitHub release artifacts.
• Mobile builds require their native SDKs even when shared code is unchanged.