An updated version of the Pivot 3 Stick Converter is out, with the ability to convert multiple selected .stk files, and providing some options for auto or manual naming of the converted files. The included Read Me has troubleshooting info added for dealing with errors that might be generated by the Converter.

View the release notes

In the wake of the Stykz 1.0 announcement, one of the features that is in Stykz is the ability to import Piv 3 .stks (something the beta versions didn’t have). As a fallout of adding the code to do this, I figured it would be helpful for the Pivot community as a whole to be able to convert Piv 3 .stks so they can be used in Piv 2 – so I made a little utility app that will do just that!

You can download it here – take note that if your Piv 3 .stk has a sprite in it, the sprite will be ignored and the rest of the figure will be converted. Should run on everything WinXP and higher, maybe even Win2K. (Remember that .pivs are NOT converted, just .stks.)

After the basic importation code was in place, I looked for a reasonably complex stick file to import, and found one on the Droidz.org forum called “advisor” created by Nazareno. To give you an idea of how this looks, the images below show the comparison between Pivot and Stykz Beta 2 (pre-release).

(Click on the thumbnails below to see the comparisons at full size.)

Here they both are in the Figure Editor (Pivot) and selected (Stykz):

And here they are in the animation (Pivot) and deselected (Stykz):

These are not 100% exact, but they are very close and we’ll be working to make sure we get as close as we can to the original .stk.

I’m excited to be able to tell you that Stykz 1.0, when it is released, will include the ability to import Pivot 2 .stk files! This means that Stykz will be able to use thousands of already created .stk files so that animators won’t have to recreate work that is easy to download and import.

We are still looking at whether to import Pivot 2 .piv files (or whether to import any Pivot 3 beta files), and if we do so, it won’t be until after the 1.0 release for all platforms.

But the ability to import .stk files will be a great benefit to everyone, and it will mean that any Pivot users who choose to use Stykz will be able to bring their sticks with them!