ruberboy

EDITED. OK mike. Everything clear. My problem was I was drawing images an moving them on spriter. The correct way to do it. Paste the swapping images and DONT move them on spriter, because even with the same pivot point it will cause little misplacements due to an incorrect perception of the person drawing. Once pasted, modify them on the drawing program ONLY. Because just a pixel moved in spriter will cause problems. Just let the images on the same positions in spriter and keep redrawing and updating images until you get a correct swap. Isnt this the same the instruction say? same size and same pivots... so the image doesnt move on spriter, you just draw different perspectives. Thanks :D

Is this any better? I have been looking at the majority of animations done in other 2d softwares and except those which use deformation (which I would use if spriter supported it fully) everyone makes the animations without torso giration. The only way to do it more or less is to carefully draw and use pieces of the body, or pieces of cloth and squash and stretch it. I still have to make the torso a bit more 3/4 view and experiment. Hoping to get skin in spriter soon. Cheers.

HI. Some questions. I know in 3d programs there are intervals that because of interpolation have to be corrected. I dont know if in spriter is like that. I think if you dont use imagechanges/swapping it is exact and have no mistakes in interpolation (I know from experience with spriter and lots of headaches). But I have discovered that if you use image swapping and you get little misplacement/jumping you have to correct every mistake or jump by using one "fixing" frame before every jump. Or may be this is normal thing in the animation world, and interpolation is known to be imperfect. Cheers.

True. Its for a videogame... the thing is Im not yet sure of the mechanics of the game... what you see is just a very preliminar version... you've got reason as the arms should move, even the shoulders and head should bounce a bit to the sides naturally. I dont know what weapon he's going to carry of if he is going to run or walk or duck. I should post the final then :D Cheers and thanks for your critic... I always receive them well no problem.

ITs a bit stupid to try to protect animations (people rip even the most impressive 2d work so far, Aka Dragons crown anims), so I will just post tiny animations and keep the HD version for now. I have improved a bit the walking animation and programming wise I am developing very well. Visual block programming is very fast!! I have yet to design level one and start with the enemy AI (I hope its not extremelly complex). Cheers.

I think anime studio uses somekind of deformation feature and as you know spriter does not officially support Deformation (skin) yet. IMHO, In spriter you can do a workaround using various parts (images) on the bending elbow and painting over with transparency but the result wont be as perfect as with deformation. Well that is the way I would do it. Cheers.

The fighting game will have to wait a bit until I get a bit more of experience animating in 2d (yes abit embarrasing for me as I can animate everything in 3d lol, many years of experience). 2d is a new beast, but very rewarding. Started A game in Stencyl (its not free, but cheap and for me is quite useful and direct). Its just another type of language for games based on blocks of code + scene actors. All visual, similar to gamemaker or construct... I hope there is no problem talking about it here. I have the first level and scene, camera system almost ready. Im no programmer, but not stupid either and I have developed some physics based games on the past and some retro little games. In a time I was mathematically inclined and was interested in programming, but art for me always was the most rewarding thing so I stopped programming long time ago and I am doing it again, as a one man company. This is the main animation (very wip). The game is about a ninja in the style of ninja gaiden, but is a ciborg, not human. Its a bit pixely for now (temporary watermark) as I have to make a watermark, a logo for my company etc... so excuse the preliminary state. Cheers. Will update more with the first level, etc.

You can copy the link, right click on the image, and paste the new url on a new navigation tab on your browser.

Thanks. Well the method is really for an approximation an then work from there. what is easier for you, the better. I find way easier doing it like this and then retouching. Use what is faster for you.

Hi bwwd. I checked your work again and I must say you are very talented because you choose exactly the right angles when doing the base sprites. I've been thinking about the fact about image switching that you comment at the starting of the thread and yes you've got reason, the only way to do image switching in very low speed and to be able to make it perfect and not look "jumpy" is forget about imageswitching at low speed and draw those few frames in all the different angles needed, or use deform/skin. For fast frames, as you can see, If it looks ok, its ok then. This last character is very well done, I like the head and how you managed to make the turn with skin. Cheers.

I discovered the reason of my previous comment about the bug of "random" locking sprites and bones. IF i Use the Space bar and PAN with it pressed then in about 30 seconds I get everything locked like the lock buttons are pressed when they are not and cannot move ii with the exception of using the cursors. If I use the small UI panning buttons for pan around then I get NO locking. So I am sure the bug is in the part of the code that is just after pressing space bar for panning. I've been all day with spriter and if I dont pan with the space bar then no problems whatsoever in about 7 hours so far. I must add that before when I didnt know and I accidentally pressed space bar for panning I was every few minutes having to close and open spriter for it to fix. Now it doesn't happen if I dont press space bar for panning I can work perfectly and seamlessly. Cheers.

hi. Still working on the movements of the character, just for practice no proyects until I learn to animate better. I have more than 7 years experience in 3d animation but 2d has been always very difficult, thats why I choose to do 2d because for me its a challenge. In 3d If you have a problem in deformations you just use extra bones or deform that especific part via vertexes(morph target, shapekeys, etc). In 2d, (spriter) You have to draw every pose with its parts. I think the faster way for me is, instead of doing the tipical anticipation-action in paper and then make each part separately, you have to make the complete character in all the poses then dissect it. This way is faster because you see the complete steps and only cut what is necessary. Here is an image, as you can see there is an almost complete pose for the long kick, all the little parts were cut once the poses were done. If I try to do it by slices without the previous poses drawn I get loosed fast. Cheers. PD: all this is just for practice, so I share what I learn. And this is the old front kick, That I am improving now:

This is a tutorial I made That I think could be a good idea. Its for making sprites in a 3/4 view which can be VERY difficult without a 3d model, so we use an easy way with the scaling tool. You can disable interpolation in the tool (in gimp) for less blurring results. If you use other program there should be an option similar. This method is very old and was used in pixelart for making things like coins or the rings in sonic spinning (or similar method). 1-First take the sprite or part you want to make 3/4 view and have it on a layer. (draw it, paste it, whatever). 2-Make 2 Duplicates. 3-Divide the 1 duplicate by middle by deleting it with the square selection tool(natural middle in this case about the navel). 4-Do the same for the other duplicate. 5- Now use the scaling tool on one half of the duplicate , in this case the one which is farther to us, and tweak it to make it narrower. 6- Do the same to the other part, but have in mind to leave one part smaller as to emulate perspective. Tweak everything By hand, I recommend 1px round brush. This is the final result after tweaking. Sorry about the crappy presentation I almost messed up last image, but you get the idea. Using a 3d modelling program and drawing over is tedious, and using the perspective tool can get messy. This way is easier... Now the most important is tweaking and leaving as you like and make last corrections at the end. Hope you find it useful, I think you can do the same thing with vectors if you use flash (Im not sure). Cheers.

Edit. My bad. I think that if you dont put the limbs exactly at the start of each bone, then you get interpolation errors in placement (perfectly logical) So I think I have it. Have to check some more... This is the work of today. updated standing anim (still working on the clothes)

Yes I have tried with mouse and the same. May be its an incompatibility thing. The tablet is a bamboo and the drivers are official. Its not a very uncommon tablet. I remember it didnt happen in the past versions. Today for example it didnt happen. It just happens from time to time, but restarting spriter fixes it.

I think you should have less problems if you work originally with the desired resolution for sprites. So you must have clear in mind the final resolution in-game. For example you work originally at 256x256 res for a sprite. Then you finish it and put it in pieces, make it into spriter. Now as Mike said you can export and use the cropping options but this is something that sometimes must be done with care as sometimes scaling or cropping can cut animations or the sprite may not be seen as nice as original res once scaled/cropped. My recomendation for full resolution work is: Always work 2x size or more with smooth sampling active in spriter when exporting animations, then if you need to resize do it in a art program without interpolation(no nearest neighbour) and check the result (it may be too blurred or not). Also check that you use 1:1 scaling (from 256x256 to 128x128 or 512x512) when you resize to smaller size you always loose crispness. Thats why I dont recommend interpolation when resizing inside pshop or whatever program you use. Cheers.

Hi, I find the same problem on latest version. Sometimes randomly you cant click and move around a sprite, as if they become locked. You have to close and open again spriter. This happens the same with mouse or tablet, in my case I use a wacom. I know because when a sprite becomes "non dragable" i change to mouse but the same until I restart spriter. Its frustrating. My os is windows vista, 3 gb Ram and a 8600M gt nvidia, acer laptop. 32 bits os. Spriter PRO.

Ok, so no one said nothing on this? how is that. This is simple my friend. First thing, using filters in pshop or whatever is not bad, for effects. If you want to have it perfect without transparency problems we will stick with Antialias (plenty of colors, no hard pixels, just default brush ok) if you want it with hard pixels (traditional pixel art) you must use something like alpha threshold and clean borders at all frames after finishing. So, first thing you want a fireball ok? Make the colors, inside white, then yellow, and then red (you can use whaever colors), now copy that layer, and in the new copy apply a filter of BLUR or GAUSSIAN BLUR or alike, ok? now change the mode of that layer to ADD. now duplicate that copy layer like 3 or 4 times and it will bring more "Shine" to it. This is the basis for all fire FX and shinings. You can change the layer modes and experiment with different colors. Hope it helps.

Thanks, but I do not understand what delay you are talking about, maybe you refer to the delay of the animated gif? -- I have decided Im not going to use pixelart in my spritings from now on because hard pixel is cool but the amount of changes you need is very time consuming and no app (spriter or others) will ever make it perfect, not even rotsprite can!! So hard pixel work by hand and HD work in spriter :D I feel a bit embarrassed to post this, but it is a practice and I think its ok to post things, so I can improve slowly. I had a problem with hard pixel animations as I was more time in gimp than in spriter changing a lot of things so I will concentrate on HD work by now on. This is a sprite based on the famous Final fight 2 for Snes (maki character), but in my style. I plan on animate it and I have been observing my mistakes and all them are based on the same thing (heights) all characters in all fighting games have a very slight rotation, they have an standing pose that is of different height than walking or punching for example. This is all work in a more pronounced and colorful style so now that I have decided to work in plenty of resolution and colors. Hope you like it, I have started animating it :D Standing for now (please note that this is just practice of my style based on old brawlers. Reduced to 2x size (no interpolation) I think working on the exact size needed is the best as nearest neighbour or cubic interpolation blurs the reduced sprites a lot. This is what I got at the moment. -edit. Images updated in next post. pd. Just learned how to use image switch correctly. You MUST have the pivot point almost exact place as to the frame before and image dimensions must match. IF swap images are parented to bones, the bones must much exact position too

HI. I have the same problem with a wacom bamboo tablet, pressing B to link a bone to a sprite doesn't change anything, actually I must press a hell lot to make the link and I have to rotate the bone to check if its linked as it doesnt change color. Cheers.

Thanks for complete response. Yes I know what you talk about, all hardpixel work that is not 45 perfect degree or multiple will cause "tearing" or bad pixels. IF the solution is to clean by hand, using 12 frames per animation is not so much work if you compare with traditional pixelart work, things the old way can be killing. I want to test point-deformation but I have never tested it. Thanks.

More in the "shinobi" platformer style. A bit harsh, still optimizing frames... I think if it looks a bit less soft is because Im trying to adapt it to 8 frames, 16 bits style. Or maybe animation wise its wrong. This is the 8 frame version for now: 12 frame version:

Happy new year to all :D Working on beatemup style graphics (the most difficult animations). Did a standing pose... If I use pixelart mode it tears a lot... any trick to avoid so much tearing/flickering? Smooth sampling:

Hi. Really nice work. Do you think using a soft brush for painting a sprite and then exporting without smooth sampling gives sharp results? The characters you made in the other post of the ninja turtles or the captain commando one here do not have any "tearing pixels". I have problems with tearing if I work directly with pixelart and no transparency (alpha threshold). Thanks.