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Please post feature suggestions here.


Mike at BrashMonkey

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I have one big suggestion so i could animate in spriter like im used to - DEFORMATION feature. [...] sometimes character must stretch his body for dynamic effect and with bone its not possible

I couldn't agree more. I bought Spriter hoping it would allow me to...

1) ...create huge pixel art bosses.

So far that's not possible because A) the zoom is blurry and B) pivot points can't be placed directly next to pixels but only on a scale from 0 to 1 relative to the sprites width/height. And of course C) being able to zoom in on the sprite inside the preview window is crucial if you want to place pivot points without having to use Windows' screen magnifier. (Yes, I'm actually doing that.) These three issues must be dealt with in future versions of Spriter. ...Please.

2) ...animate characters like Vanillaware does in Odin Sphere, Muramasa or Dragon's Crown:

iNLVRti.gif

But in order for this to work Spriter would have to support real-time deformation of sprites.

Brashmonkey, if you haven't already, please think about this. (I don't think you ever replied to bwwd's original post about it.)

And if it's definitely not going to work EVER, you may say so right now. So bwwd, myself, and others can start looking for a workaround.

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@Wiimoto

Vanillaware characters are not animated by simple deformation.

Their animation is made by drawing their images into 3D planes and deforming that, but it's not even limited to that, they sometimes use complete 3D models for certain parts of their characters, it's not possible to reach the amount of rotation they do sometimes with mere deformations. Remember their their newer games are made with the Cryengine.

The problem with deformations is that probably it would be a hell to implement real time playback in most 2D game engines, I know that at least it would be a pain in the ass to do so in gamemaker (go look at how few sprite deformation actions GM has).

And yes, they have mentioned the addition of deformation several times in the past, the general answer they have given is that it will be looked at when all the features of 1.0 are completed.

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The problem with deformations is that probably it would be a hell to implement real time playback in most 2D game engines

And the possibility to do real time playback of the animations is - to me - one of the things that make Spriter interesting, so I hope that if/when such more complicated (from the point of view of the game engine) features are added, they'll be marked off clearly so that people don't use them by mistake and then get disappointed when their engine is incapable of playing the animations properly.

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@tombmonkey

I've never actually played Dragon's Crown but what I've seen so far (like those three walk cycles) is definitely possible with simple deformation. Slightly bending an elbow, knee, or maybe the tip of a hat. That's all I really want. Maybe that came across differently in my first post. I'm not asking for anything that's even remotely related to 3D.

the general answer they have given is that it will be looked at when all the features of 1.0 are completed.
Ugh... that's what they always say. Understandable, sure, considering the amount of work that still lies ahead of them, but it's still a pity. I was hoping I could start development on my first big Spriter-powered game by next spring. Guess not. Brashmonkey are several months behind schedule and surely 1.0 won't be released before summer of 2014. Even if, for some reason, it still says... "Q2 of 2013" on the website.
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Unless I'm missing something, the latest version of Spriter is still missing some very basic functionalities:

1. Ability to easily select a group of Keyframes

Say I have 10 keyframes I want to move, currently it's very laborious process of ctrl-clicking each one, one mis-click and the entire selection is lost. Would be great if I could just press shift, and click the first and last keyframes, to select all of the ones in between.

2. Ability to stretch/compress a group of keyframes

Once I have the 10 frames selected, I may want to stretch or compress them to make the animations shorter/longer. Currently there's no way to do this as far as I can tell. I'd like to be able to hold "Alt" and then click either end of the selected frames, to stretch all the intermediate frames.

Common use cases for this are:

1. To slowDown/speedUp specific parts of an animation

2. To quickly move a specific part of the animation along the timeline

3. To quickly delete a specific part of the animation

4. To quickly duplicate a specific part of the animation

This seems like such obvious functionality... am I just being dumb and not seeing how to do it?

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We definitely need the ability to "freeze" values - to keep the position they are set to, but have an assigned value of zero.

For example, I rig my character, and one of the bones is translated to the worldspace value of +3x and -5y, with rotation 180 degrees, and scale of 0.6x and 1y.

I freeze the values on the bone.

That bone now displays local translation and rotation values of 0, and scale values of 1, but retains its world values and thus holds its position.

I can now "zero out" the rotation and translation, to return it to the default "freeze" position - though the return to default scale would probably be the most useful, during regular usage.

Altering values manually, in the Object Properties tab should also respect the different inheritance switches (I'm pretty sure it ignored switching off scale inherit when I tried to scale by entering values) and especially the IK locking, which it definitely ignored when I entered translation values.

I'd also suggest the ability to add "Spring IKs" across a series of three bones, for quadrupedal hind-legs. Like so:

21or0nq.png

An absolute must-have would be a graph editor. Here's the graph from one part of a cycle I did in another piece of software:

2m2c9kw.png

You can see translation values for X, Y, and Z axes. The points are keyframes, obviously.

The addition of speed curves brings Spriter one step closer, but the real power of the graph lies in the ability to overview everything, and offset as needed.

You will see data for the loop expanding past the actual cycle, but this just allows for smoother looping.

From the graph, we can retime things, add offsets for nice - and easy - overlapping action, slide the amount of rotation, translation, scale, etc. up or down as needed... the graph is easily one of the most powerful tools at an animator's disposal - especially when working with cycle-based animation, as in games.

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Can you guys add morph target animation tool to Spriter ?

like this article http://code.zynga.com/2011/11/mesh-compression-in-dream-zoo/ said

Looks like the engine of Rayman legends that is ubi Art framework used this technique, to combined use of morph target animation with skeleton animation should make more complicated animation easyly.

Here is a video shows how animations of Rayman legends made by ubi art framework.

]

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Can you guys add morph target animation tool to Spriter ?

like this article http://code.zynga.com/2011/11/mesh-compression-in-dream-zoo/ said

Looks like the engine of Rayman legends that is ubi Art framework used this technique, to combined use of morph target animation with skeleton animation should make more complicated animation easyly.

Here is a video shows how animations of Rayman legends made by ubi art framework.

]

I did some searching into morphing and it looks really cool but I don't know how much something like that increases the amount of the file size. Found alot of stuff related to morphing, heres some videos.

<-- looks like it could be used for game animation

<-- 90s morphing program (the code for it only lives on as a node in SoftImage(but i found the last original program and am running/playing with it =P)).
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I'd like a feature of being able to play a sound file, that I can sync the animation to.

It would allow us to sync up explosions, sound effects, and dialog.

One thing missing from these kind of animation tools is voice tools. I can create the mouth movements, but it's difficult to sync the movements to the sound.

I've tried apps like Crazytalk, but it doesn't give me control of other parts of the animation. With just a few tweaks, this app could do it.

Ideally, when I hit "Play" it should play the sound, and my animation at the same time. It doesn't even have to be included with the XML file as long as I know when to start the sound.

It would also be a nice feature for you guys to encourage people to upgrade to the Pro edition :)

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I'd like a feature of being able to play a sound file, that I can sync the animation to.

It would allow us to sync up explosions, sound effects, and dialog.

One thing missing from these kind of animation tools is voice tools. I can create the mouth movements, but it's difficult to sync the movements to the sound.

I've tried apps like Crazytalk, but it doesn't give me control of other parts of the animation. With just a few tweaks, this app could do it.

Ideally, when I hit "Play" it should play the sound, and my animation at the same time. It doesn't even have to be included with the XML file as long as I know when to start the sound.

It would also be a nice feature for you guys to encourage people to upgrade to the Pro edition :)

This would be very useful - this feature of Maya is a real time-saver. Don't have to worry about breaking down the sound file with a dope sheet. Such a long, tedious job.

Ideally, sound should play back when scrubbing.

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Hi, I'm not sure this is a feature and I should post here but it's the closest I could find. I use windows 8 and 7 upscale 150%. This results in some visual very unappealing menus. I can't imagine it being hard to fix and I would be much excited to hear that you taken a look at it.

Please!

Spriter%20win8%20150%25%20scale.PNG

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/809 ... ptions.PNG

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- I would like to have "create keyframe " button which would create keyframe 10 keyframes forward from current position, so you would get very even animations and keyframing, also that 10 keyframes value could be editable so you would create new keyframe 5 frames forward or 20 frames forward etc.

- Ability to select keyframes close to each other and pick option "merge" so it would merge keyuframes together and remove all the keyframes that are selected and close to each other, naturally animations are played clockwise so it would change the pose taking this into consideration and would use frames on the right side of selection as priority and join them with other ones but the one with highest priority would create the final pose after joining, this is only logical i think.

- Currently keyframe interpolation is very linear, this creates robot like movement and its tricky to create fluid looking natural movement because speed is constant, it doesnt slowdown and smoothout movement on start and end between keyframes, i hope it will changed and new interpolation will be be global and default option because linear interpolation is not needed for creating lifelike animations and it could leave bad impression on animator when testing spriter.

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Speed curves for ease-in-and-out are already working, and coming in the next beta.

Something I would really like to see is the ability to create an alpha mask to hide any selected object within the mask - I recently animated a creature clambering out of the ground, and it was incredibly difficult to make it look like it was actually crawling out of the ground, by hiding the parts of the body that were 'below ground' and adding lots of dirt to hide the parts of the body that were coming out... it would have been much better if I could have drawn a box around everything below the shifting dirt, applied a mask to the creature's assets, and had that masked off.

(You can see the animation in question at roughly 1:15 in the video below.)

This would be a huge benefit to cartoony characters who pull their items out of "hammer-space" as well; reaching into a mysterious portal, and having their arm vanish past a certain point... I'm sure there are a lot of other situations when part of something would need to be masked off, and having the entire asset hidden doesn't work for the animation.

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I tried to do anim right now and it crashed when it was like 90% complete :shock: , most irritating part i find using bones, its tricky to get them into rotation mode without getting them into stretch mode, it should be rotation mode only, stretching should be done with keyboard shortcut like S not with clicking twice on bone or somethin because its really easy to mess things up this way, also i dont like how undo works, it doesnt get you back to previous position, it undoes in background and you have no clue how many undos you did really.These are most irritating things for me now, also i would like to have keyframes only mode, i dont need many keyframes to create good animation and i want to move only between keyframes and dont want to see so long timeline thats always ends offscreen, it should always fit in screen area.Id like to make first keyframe then second keyframe 10 frames away, then next fkeyframe on 20 and next on 30, last keyframe on 40 and thats it can be so much simple now im struggling on timeline with pressing 1 and 2 but even this somehow didnt helped and i created keyframe where i didnt wanted to, i dont like this, I would like to drag keyframe onto older keyframe and merge them automatically if i will let mouse button go.

Working only on keyframes is really great and im using it in current software, i need keyframe i create it, i dont have to worry about creating it unintentionally in wrong place so keyframes only mode would be nice.

I think i will upload video how i animate to show what i mean cause its hard to explain keyframe only mode but its fastest way to create animations.

--

OK i made tutorial which i wanted to do anyway, you can see how only keyframes workflow speeds up everything, you dont need to worry about timeline, you just switch between keyframes copying them, thats why i would like button to create keyframes in spriter and also keyframes only workflow without timeline, eventually some kind of separate timeline with bigger clickable keyframes next to each other.

You can also see how deformation is made with control points, every body part is stretched by them and you decide where you want to have control points , if only spriter would have something like this... another thing is also non linear keyframe interpolation, its smoothed out to avoid robotic like movement with diagonals and straight lines only.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPrW_Ts6pnI

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You may do well with 4 keyframes and curves, I personally need lots of keyframes for switching and detailing of the animation, and specially so that everything doesn't happen exactly at the same time (how would you key secondary animations with only a handfull of keys?).

Also, spriter's intention is real time playback within 2D engines, show me any 2D engine doing the kind of deformation you make on stickman (hint:rayman engine is 3D, all Vanillaware games are 3D, vector images don't count) extra points if it's actually a publicly available authoring tool.

Implementing such kind of deformation in an engine like gamemaker, construct or cocos2D would be so hard that at such point you are better off using a 3D engine with 3D animations disguised as 2D, like rayman and vanillaware games.

If you definitely must have that kind of deformation, then I recommend using blender for animation and unreal as the game engine, both of them are free and will get you exactly the results you want: massive deformation potential of pixel based images and real time playback.

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A couple of things that should be somewhat simple to implement but really useful.

1. The ability to name mainline keys

Simple naming property to the key field with a hotkey + mouseclick text field modal or something could be really useful.

2. Invisible mainline range fields.

So, being able to add ranges to the timeline would be pretty awesome. Ranges wouldn't affect the animation at all but would rather serve as invisible markers on the timeline for either the artist or the developer.

When I say ranges I mean something like 2 (start,end) range markers on the timeline that would specify where an attack can actually cause collision f.e.

Keep up the good work and stuff.

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If you definitely must have that kind of deformation, then I recommend using blender for animation and unreal as the game engine, both of them are free and will get you exactly the results you want: massive deformation potential of pixel based images and real time playback.

Ive been there, blender was my first try with deformation and it cant switch textures in mid anim without fancy workarounds., also mesh needs to be subdivided a lot because blender is buggy with simple meshes and textures.So i started to search and i found stickman.

I think people already tried to say deformation is not supported in engine etc and all this weird stuff, great , so dont use it if your engine dont support it and, my does support png frames so im all good, stop thinking just about yourself and your engine, a lot of animators will tell you taht without deformation anims looks too stiff, you can limit software by other crippled software but im against it, if spriter would support deformation it may force engine devs to support it.

Currently spriter does have stretching of body parts but its not really that controllable and if you want to use it then it messes up pivot point and linear interpolation on top of that is not helping.

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Then, if you are happy using rendered png's, my question would be why not keep using stickman? or use an actual animation program like after effects, anime studio, toon boom or even flash? that or using XSI or Max or Maya for the 3D if blender is as buggy as you say (it's not).

For me, I would rather have them use their effort and time implementing features that will actually play a role in spriter's strengths (real time playback) instead of catering to people who either don't want to buy or don't want to learn an animation tool that suit their needs (toon boom can be quite expensive, but it's oh so awesome).

my does support png frames so im all good

Good luck getting that to run on a phone, or having large characters in hd resolution, or having an installer that doesn't compete in size with a AAA game, or getting a huge amount of characters on screen, or not eating all the available vram with only a handul of characters, or animating background elements "etc and all this weird stuff".

And yes, I know a lot of animators think that animation without deformation is stiff, and they are also sensible enough to use a software that supports it, like any of the ones I mentioned above.

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