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screens and info on the upcoming build


lucid

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Hi everyone,

We're sorry there's no new build quite yet, it's going to be at least a few more days, so in hopes of making the wait easier for you, here's a preview of just how big of an update this is going to be, along with a few screen-shots to whet your appetites. We're working hard to make sure it will be well worth the wait.

newskinsmall.PNG

We've already stated the new version is drastically faster, but to give something a little more concrete than "drastically" I was doing some unscientific benchmarks a few days ago, and I'll share my findings here. First off, the current build that everyone is currently using has performance issues with objects being stretched to large dimensions. Changing image dimensions no longer has any effect on performance. Stretching the monster example to full-screen was less than 15 frames per second on my fairly up to date pc on the current build. On the upcoming beta it runs at well over 100 fps.

Having large numbers of sprites on screen is silky smooth as well. Over 100 sprites on screen, I was still getting useable framerates. And finally, bones is where the one of the largest speed increases takes place. In the current build creating a chain(where each bone is a child of the previous) of 20 bones or so starts to cause slowdown, and a few bones more it's unusably slow. In the new version I had a chain of over 60 bones maintaining over 100 fps.

The big changes in this build aren't all just under the hood, either. Spriter will allow for independent key frames per image or bone, making the creation of lots of different types of animations much faster, easier and more flexible. This new timeline comes with a super tiny footprint on your screen, as requested and suggested by many users. Here's a comparison(current above, upcoming beta below):

old%20vs%20newsmall.png

The new timeline can be expanded to view and edit individual timelines for each object:

fulltimelinesmall.PNG

You can also shrink the timeline view down to a much smaller size, and Spriter will always make sure to scroll the currently selected item into view:

timeline1showingsmall.PNG

Now each image can be given a default custom pivot point, which will really be useful once we introduce the character mapping feature which will allow swapping out images with others to create variations of character or entirely different characters using the same animation data.

Other improvements to work-flow for this next build will include:

Spriter will no longer auto-key when making selections. You must make a change or click the make key icon. No more key frames you didn't intend to make.

undo/redo restores previous selection and in general is much more stable than the current build.

A new, easier to understand and use bone re-parenting system so you can finish rigging and start animating all the faster.

The longstanding display issues with pixelly distortion of rotated sprites is fixed.

And this next build will even start to introduce some of the features which will be very handy for larger projects, such as:

Creating multiple characters (sets of animations, such as player, effects, enemies etc) per file, which will make organizing and previewing large Spriter files for animation-heavy games much easier.

Combine characters from other files, which will allow multiple artists to contribute to the same Spriter project and merge them when needed... this will also allow for collecting animations for multiple Spriter art packs into one cohesive Spriter file for your games.

We hope you're as excited as we are about these new features and apologize again for this huge delay...the wait is almost over for this next build and updates from then on will be much more frequent...and should each introduce substantial improvements to Spriter's work-flow, flexibility and feature-set.

Words can't express how much we appreciate your support and patience, but we're determined to prove our gratitude by delivering the game animation tool of you dreams as soon as humanly possible.

-Edgar and Mike at BrashMonkey.

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@jason.a , for which platform?

Trixtor, no, no changes to the file format. We are considering expanding it to allow more features, but it wouldn't be any changes that would break current implementations. Just new additions. In this case we would have a discussion on the forum about the specifics before actually releasing it.

Also, either this build or soon we'll start including Spriter specific metadata that won't be needed at all for implementations, but will allow Spriter to load up settings, like IK locks etc, that it currently doesn't save.

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I have a few of questions as I'm an animator newb and only barely get Spriter :D

1. if Spriter projects are now supposed to handle a games entire spriter assets. What kind of orginization system is involved. If I need to change a head to another. What's to stop it from showing me all the other parts including enemies? The number of sprites are going to add up fast.

2. Will you be supporting SVG at some point.

3. How is changing clothing work in game. And if clothing is changed there is sometimes different angled versions of the clothing. How is that all handled?

4. Will there be a new tutorials for this release as the interface and new features are being added.

5. When is it coming out. I'm excited :)

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Hi jayderyu,

Spriter is to create highly optimized animations for games and will allow to easily and visually edit some game related data...like triggering sounds, variable changes, collision rectangles, image points (such as for anchoring or spawning from those points) etc. But Spriter is not a game engine. It's meant to be used with game authoring software.

1) Spriter will soon have its feature we've called "Character-Maps".. This will allow you to easily tell Spriter or your game engine to swap out single images or entire folders of images with alternate ones, or just hide them all together. This will be great for anything from making a character sometimes have a hat or cape, and some times not, or to give them new armor or weapons, or completely change one character to another using the same animation data. It's up to the Spriter user to organize their images neatly onto logical folders... but Spriter will eventually have features to let you move images to different folders from within Spriter to make it super easy to reorganize as you go. The number of Sprites used in modular animation techniques (such as Spriter uses) will always be drastically fewer (and smaller) than with full frame animation.

2) It is possible we'll support vector art some time down the line, but if that happens, it will be some time after we've implemented and perfected a long list of other features we have planned... so, its possible, but not guaranteed, and if ever, not for quite some time.

3) This is Character Maps again.. You'll simply tell Spriter that you want to create a "Character Map" for an "entity" (an entity is a set of animations). A character map is a list of images or folders of images, and what images they should be swapped out for. You will need the same exact number of sprites representing the new clothes as sprites with the original clothes...angles has nothing to do with it. If the default character has 8 arm images with a short sleeve blue shirt, and you want a version with a long sleeve red shirt, you'll need 8 long red sleeve images exactly the same as the blue short sleeve images.

4) We'll start by creating new tutorial vids as soon as possible...once the new build is released, and try to release videos for each new feature introduced... then, as soon as Spriter 1.0 is released one of our top priorities will be to make full documentation and tutorials for it.

5) We're not sure exactly when Spriter Pro 1.0 will be ready , but it should be some time Q1 of 2013. The next build (which is long overdue) should be released within a matter of days.

Thank you very much for the support and excitement. We're just as excited and working very hard go get Spriter fully featured and super easy and flexible to use ASAP.

cheers,

Mike at BrashMonkey

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Ok guys, what's going on?

Back in October you promised way more frequent updates after a4.1 was done.... then nothing. You promised a build by mid December, nothing, then by the end of the year, nothing. Then by mid January. Mid January rolls around and you promise a build in a "few more days" ... then after about 3-4 days, you promised a build in a "few more days" .... . Now it's January 24th. We haven't had a build since October!....

So what's going on? I actually really don't mind if the build takes until 2014, but what I do mind is when I perceive a promise has been made to me, and that promise isn't kept. It rubs me wrong.

How about a little straight shooting? And maybe a realistic projection of when a new build might be available? I also program, so I feel for you in that respect. When I make schedules I estimate how long it will take, assuming 8 hour days, then I double that time. It seems to work pretty well.

But please, whatever you do, don't tell me mid-February, if it's really not going to be mid February.

I apologize if I'm coming across rude, I know there are factors that I'm not aware of, but since I'm not aware of them, I can't understand them.

Please see this from the perspective of a user who sent you money, and actually logs into your forum every morning to check to see if there is any news.

Thank you,

Jason

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Hi Jason.a,

Please don't worry at all about being perceived as rude. We feel nothing but humbled and are very grateful for the patience and support you and the rest of the Spriter community have shown us from the beginning of the Kickstarter campaign until this very moment, and we've been trying our best to balance making yet another delay announcement, with trying to have some substance when we update.

The fact is our hard work and dedication is not to just simply deliver the first version of Spriter Pro as quickly as possible, but to set as stable and flexible a foundation as possible to continue to deliver additional abilities and ease of use well beyond the feature set listed for Spriter 1.0. While re-factoring for optimization and stability reasons, I also took time to lay the groundwork not just for the remaining features to 1.0, but also the features to come shortly after. When 1.0 is released, development won't pause, we'll go straight to work on post 1.0 features, and putting added focus on supporting the plug-in development effort.

Our original estimation was for late 2012. After the Kickstarter campaign concluded there was high demand for a native Mac and Linux version. The choice was either to restart Spriter on a much more powerful, cross platform system (which we did), or wait until after 1.0 was finished for Windows users only, then halt the addition of more Spriter features for a long period of time in order to finally re-development all of Spriter to be cross platform. We hope you agree we made the right decision. That is part of the reason for missing our late 2012 estimate.

As for the recent series of delays, We apologize we didn't communicate better, or more often, but the intent was never to deceive. Also, we would never intentionally alter past posts in an attempt to deceive. We both have no recollection of ever changing posts mentioning any dates (We did recently change the ETA on our website though, which seemed like the only responsible thing to do) and if we've done so, it would be to not mislead late-comers who find these old posts and might otherwise expect a Spriter 1.0 release at the time of these old estimates.. but again, neither of us remember doing such a thing.

So what is the exact state of this next build after all this time? Without throwing ourselves into the “exact date trap” again, we can definitely say its getting very close to release, and more importantly for anyone reading who hasn't seen the update we can say its in many aspects besides performance a huge improvement over the currently released build. We wont make this post even bigger than it has to be with this information, but invite you to visit the latest update on our Kickstarter page if you've not yet done so for more information in this regard:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/539 ... iter/posts

Sometime tomorrow we will post a concise list of features we've just implemented along with a list of the features we still need to implement before we can release the build, and we will update the list every day to let you know exactly how much progress has been made.

Thanks again very much for your support and patience,

Edgar and Mike at BrashMonkey

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Thanks for your response Mike, having a list of "in-progress" features that gets updated regularly would go a long way to ease the internet addicts (me) that come check the forums every few days to see if anything new is up. It might also give people a subjective estimate as to when the next version might be out, without you guys having to commit to a hard date and then deal with the fallout if something comes up that delays your progress.

I think everyone here has no doubts about your ability to deliver, but every time I get to play with a new build I feel like a little kid again thinking of all the possibilities I can do with it. Thanks for all your great work, looking forward to checking out the new UI and improvements!

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yeah I have to admit this "just a couple of days" is gnawing at my insides :D

especially the C2 plugin. improting is soooo iffy.

Re-import

actually this reminds me. Guys when you do the C2 plugin PLEASE oh please make sure that the system has a model of "reimport". I was trying to use it. Got it working. Realized I couldn't flip anything easily so did another animation. and then everything broke. Not only did everything break. To add the spriter object again requires to remove EVERYTHING of the spriter object and in C2 this also automatically removes all actions and commands. In a large project this is devestating and an easy killer to using the Spriter. In C2 Spriter needs to be re-importablt on top of already existing spriter. It must replace cleanly. Either by moving the spriter files into position or just making it in built to the Spriter Plugin. It's not optional.

As an example if I ever end up doing my rpg(side view) and all my NPC's, Players, monsters are in Spriter animation situation. Then I need to put in a new enemy or the animator changes some animation. At this time EVERY thing and everyone and everyanimation, binding, creation will have spriter code removed from the project. On such a large project could be remove 30% of the code for just a small change.

re-import non optional.

This also leads to

Inverted

I was trying to use Spriter and only animate right model. Then use Mirror. Spriter doesn't use mirror. So I found the hint of using -width. Well unfortunatly doing that in C2 left results that didn't look right. The object were flipped, but also the center position was moved. And in Spriter there is no easy flip while maintaining easy size reference. I'm fine having a good mirror mode either using spriter duplicate and flip or a method in C2 that doesn't create strange results.

really, really want this out :D

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hi jayderyu. Reimport will be on Scirra/Ashley's end of things, and he will update his end of things after I update the plugin, but reimport is something we discussed, and we both know it's not optional.

I'm going to finish a few more things before stopping for the night, and then post the update with what's left before release. When this release comes, I'll have a detailed explanation of what took so long.

C2 plugin and Spriter will be as awesome as you hoped, just behind schedule.

Thanks for your patience everyone. I know this delay hasn't been fun.

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No. i'm sorry. I'm out of patience the excitement gnaws at me whenever I'm at the computer. I suck at animation, but I find it far easier to do that drawing anything :D. the wait eats at my soul and my very body aches for the plugin :D Oh well. all there is to do is waiting.

Oh right one more question about maybe something I missed.

Spine2d? has the ability to move body parts independently. They showed a sample animation of Spineboy walking and the heading following the mouse. Will be able to divide animations? Have one walking animation and if I start firing a weapon have the upper body use a different set. Or would it be better to just animate both parts of the body seperatly?

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