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Please post feature suggestions here.


Mike at BrashMonkey

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I haven't checked this whole thread, but...

What about sub-animations? What I mean by this, is animations that occur without interrupting a 'main' animation, such as swinging a sword while in the middle of a walk cycle. The walk cycle continues as normal, but the upper body performs an attack sub-animation. The Mega Man Zero series does this with Zero's walking sword slash.

Hi Candescence,

We plan on a flexible Spriter animation within a Spriter animation features, but these will likely not appear until after the first release of 1.0. we simply must finish all critical features first.

What you're mentioning though is even more sophisticated, because the time that the upper body animation needs to begin depends completely on player input within the game engine....the easist way to do this anytime soon is to animate the upper and lower bodies as seperate objects, then anchor one to the other in the game engine. This is the way it would be done for most games...

We'll see if we can figure out a more "automatic" solution for Spriter users who need this type of functionality some time after we release version 1.0.

cheers,

Mike at BrashMonkey

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Hi All,

I've only just picked up Spriter and i'm still getting to grips with it. So far it seems to offer me exactly the kind of features i'm after without the bloat that you get in other packages.

One thing I was wondering about is whether you had any plans to support vector graphics in future? That way I could scale the components of my character without losing image quality. I currently create base images in Inkscape. Then, to use in Spriter, I export as png. Finally I export the animation frames as png from Spriter. Perhaps not the best workflow but i'm pretty new to all of this.

Just to be clear, i'm not suggesting you include the drawing tools in spriter to create the images. I actually quite like the split between tools.

Anyway I haven't bought in yet, most likely will soon, keep up the good work.

Hi Hosepha,

it's not impossible Spriter will some day be able to load and animate vector files, but this would definately be some time after 1.0 is released and rock solid. In the mean time, if you plan to use Spriter simply to export sequential images instead of using the actual Spriter file in your games, then I suggest you simply export high resolution (maybe 3 or 4 times the final size you need) images to use, then simply scale down your animations while exporting them from Spriter.

cheers,

Mike at BrashMonkey

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Hi,

I've read the boards and ther shortcut but I'm quite new to Spriter, so I'm sorry if I missed a feature which is already there.

Simply put, I would like a 'add keyframe' shortcut/button which adds a keyframe in the current frame which freezes the exact position of the objects at that point in time.

It would often be easier than copy and paste, and it would also speed up other manipulations (beside tiny adjustments, another fancy use could be to add some keyframes at irregular intervals in the middle of an interpolated animation and then set them all to linear as to simulate stop motion).

As an advanced feature it could also be interesting to have a tool which generates a keyframe in the entire timeline at every decided interval (i.e. every 100ms).

Cheers,

ele

Hi EleBriscoe,

Add keyframe buttons are back in the next build. Stay tuned, and thanks for your patience. Thanks for the suggestion about the keyframe at time intervals. I think its a cool idea, but can't promise you'll be seeing that before 1.0 is released.

cheers,

Mike at BrashMonkey

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1). Ease in \ Ease Out + Graph editor

2). IK\FK switch for the whole character (holding shift does only "half" IK for example a human leg does not move the top part of it only the two lower)

3). MS\FPS indicator (since most animators works on fps systems)

4). Smooth zooming and panning (could be nice)

5). maybe a skew ? (like in flash)

6). good onion skin

Hi bobo,

Ease in and out will appear in Spriter 1.0. The other features you mention are things we plan to add some time after 1.0, except for "good onion skin", as we'd need to know exactly what you mean. I can say Edgar is currently finishing tweaks and optimizations to onion-skin, but there's no way for us to know if that is what you mean by good. If there's a specific aspect to onion-skin that you're after, please let us know.

Also, smooth zooming and especially panning are very low priority, as they add nothing in the way of actual functionality and are also a matter of taste. (For example I personally hate it when the canvas drifts to a stop after I let go of the mouse button in an art program. I like absolute percision and immediacy when scrolling and zooming in on my art.) We still might add it, but definately after 1.0, and as a feature that can be toggled on or off.

cheers,

Mike at BrashMonkey

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Hey, thank you for developing this awesome tool :D I bought a copy and can't wait for the pro version.

Feature suggestions?

+ One thing that I have always found tedious with editing files is having to navigate to them with my file manager. When having millions of body parts all in one folder, it can get bothersome finding the one I want to edit or iterate.

A small, but very useful feature would be the ability to set an external image editor in the options and the ability to open body parts with it from within sprite's object list.Then all one has to do to edit a body part is to double click it on the list or left click-edit externally.

+a little filter search box above the list would compliment that nicely.

+ Just middle click to pan, instead of having to hold spacebar. Blender, inkscape and gimp do that design and it's beautiful.

+Ability to import an image sequence for reference. For example say I made an animation pencil test in some app that gives me the ability to go with the traditional way of doing it- with a pencil brush. I am personally interested in doing my animations in http://www.pencil-animation.org/ and turning them to polished character sprites in spriter. If spriter had something like a grease pencil layer to write notes and make pencil tests that would completely remove the need to use pencil.All I use in pencil2d really is the pencil brush and the eraser,combined with the layers. It's time line is not as advanced as spriter as it lacks basic features and is no good for storing multiple animation clips.

hi blurymind,

Great suggestions,

As for middle-click to scroll, that now works. We also plan on adding the ability to load in images as reference and to load in sequential images as animations for Spriter 1.0.

keep the great suggestions comming everyone!

Mike at BrashMonkey

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Gotta say, B2 release is looking real good. Though, there're two things I'd like to ask about.

First one isn't a new feature, but rather a feature that was promised in the original version of Spriter. Hitboxes.

It was that feature which I really was interested in and wanted when I bought my license.

Is it still a planned feature, or has it been dropped?

The second thing is an optional mode for putting down keyframes. I really don't like that the program puts down a keyframe

whenever I do anything. If I could have the program only put down a keyframe when I press a button in the GUI or key on the keyboard

that would be great.

Hi InkBot,

Hitboxes will definately appear before 1.0 is released, as will many other features/ Don't worry, no planned feature has been dropped, we were simply delayed for a while. Thanks for your patience. Also, A key frame makign button is back in the next build.

Cheers,

Mike at BrashMonkey

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The things I would like are

Tooltips, ease of use things, clear labels : I had to watch the video to figure out how to do things. Messaging to communicate how to do things would be very helpful.

True IK that adjusts all bones necessary, not just one bone back

On that note, the ability to set acceptable angles for bones to bend, so shoulders automatically don't pop out of sockets

Skew/stretch, just a really important animation thing. Check out #1 on this list for details. http://art-eater.com/2010/07/test-1-darkstalkers/

Good product so far, needs a bit more to be great though!

Hi ChrisAlgoo,

Thanks for the kind words, great suggestions and feedback,

The videos are the only thing we have time to create at the moment, as new Spriter builds appear, to clearly show all Spriter features and how they are meant to be used. In the near future we'll begin working on the actual manual as well as tooltips, lables, pop-ups ect built into Spriter to make things as obvious and easy to learn as possible. Thanks for your patience.

Skew is something we will definately support, but will likely appear some time after the first official release of version 1.0. More advanced IK features will also most likely appear some time after 1.0 is released and rock-solid.

cheers,

Mike at BrashMonkey

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These may have already been dealt with, but I have been really busy lately so not had time to keep up with the forums here.

My main things are:

Hitboxes / Collision Data

This has been mentioned above, but a way to get the current width/height of the animation at it's current frame so we can then pull this data out and use it to write our own collision routines.

ie. A character is 100x200, but halfway through the animation bends down to 100x100 - I need to be able to pull this data so I can deal with the new size in my collision code.

Change Graphics in Realtime

Imagine you have a character, who has an inventory full of clothes, armour, weapons etc, I'm talking hundreds/thousands here for the sake of argument.

Now when the player decides to change clothes and get ready for a swim, we need to be able to switch out the "standard" plain character legs, and replace them with some shorts.

I know we could load every single possible graphic and "hide" them until needed, and then show them when they are selected, but this is not a workable solution when (a) there are thousands of possible permutions and (b) I am working with mobile devices with limited memory.

Is this possible? Is this planned? Am I making sense? lol!

I do have more but I'm away from my home computer at the moment and that's where my list is.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi rIKmAN,

Don't worry, Hitboxes and collision data will be appearing an an upcoming build, now that the stuff more critical to general animating is in.

Also, realtime swapping or hiding/revealing of images is the feature we call "CharacterMaps" and has always been a big part of our plans for Spriter...it too will be appearing in an upcoming build.

We'll make sure to create good documentation for plug-in developers too so that there's support in the game engines to combine (mic and match) charactermaps instantly in realtime.

cheers,

Mike at BrashMonkey

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I'm using Spriter pro and it's great so far. Some things that really would help:

- Too many shortcuts and not enough buttons. Shortcuts are great, but I'm old and forget things easily :)

- Remap shortcuts. I'm so used to things like < and > to move the timeline to the next\previous keyframes from 3D Studio Max. Again I'm old my brain gets messed up moving between the two programs

- Also this is Construct specific - blending between animations. It would be great to be able to define the length of the blend too.

Thanks!

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Not sure if this has been mentioned as this thread is 17 pages long,

It would be very nice to have options available on right click.

hot keys are cool but my memory is not that great lol. it took me 2 days to learn the hot keys for this program and i still get confused some times.

I find my self right clicking on the bone or image to open a list of options. (just a thought)

keep it up!! this is awesome stuff. love it!

when i roll out my new site i will be happy to add a graphic link back to Brashmonkey for you guys, send me a image.

admin@21bypass.com

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I am working with B3.

If you could add a clearer way to control the zoom in and out, because I am working with smaller, more pixelated images and the zoom controls get kind of clumsy after a while of zooming in. So if you could have a zoom percentage (maybe MS paint style?) and then a 1:1 snap button (like with Photoshop) that would be great.

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Great software, I'm using it more each day! Just downloaded the new version.

One feature that would be nice would be a control that allowed you to specify the number of rotations for a sprite/bone when animating, or at least specifying a rotation higher than 360 degrees or a negative rotation value. I find it tough to animate the rotations for the sprites/bones accurately. And I get weird results using the angle widget currently available, like the bones/sprites rotating in the opposite directions.

Another feature would being able to change the timeline to Frame/sec.

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Hello, I am drawing assets mostly in Illustrator, it would be great if I could just drag an drop my selection from illustrator to Spriter as a new object (or directly as png).

Very specific need, so I guess it won't be a priority, but just so you keep it in mind for later ^^

Thanks.

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Hi InkBot,

Hitboxes will definately appear before 1.0 is released, as will many other features/ Don't worry, no planned feature has been dropped, we were simply delayed for a while. Thanks for your patience. Also, A key frame makign button is back in the next build.

Cheers,

Mike at BrashMonkey

Now that B3 is out I checked it out. The Keyframe buttons are there, but the, to me, annoying habit of the program to place down a key whenever I make a change is still there, and I can't find any indication that you can turn that off. Which kinda makes the keyframe button inclusion slightly pointless, to me.

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Now that B3 is out I checked it out. The Keyframe buttons are there, but the, to me, annoying habit of the program to place down a key whenever I make a change is still there, and I can't find any indication that you can turn that off. Which kinda makes the keyframe button inclusion slightly pointless, to me.

There's no way to turn off this default functionality at this time. Maybe later. I should mention there will be a way to amke a modification to an object across all frames at once in version 1.0

Right now the make keyframe buttons are useful if you want to "protect" an exact "pose" for a character(or any kind of animation) from changes you're about to make earlier in the timeline, or to basically "mark" a spot in the time line where you will want to make a new key so that the 1 and 2 keys can bring you back to that spot to work. There are a few other handy uses for it.

As it stands now, I'd be frustrated if Spriter did NOT create a key when I altered something at a specific spot in the timeline and instead altered either the previous keyframe or all keyframes. Are one of these the bahavior you are suggesting or is there another option I've not considdered?

cheers,

Mike at BrashMonkey

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Just bought Spriter today and the first thing I attempted to animate was a snake-like creature and couldn't help but wish there was spline IK.

Not sure how feasible such a feature would be, but it would certainly be helpful for this particular project.

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