Spriter Beta Pre-Release

[lucid]

Hi Everyone,

At long last here is the pre-release of the new beta of Spriter. Please keep in mind, this build is still pre-beta and while offering a huge performance increase and many new features, is not yet ready to replace the current alpha-build of Spriter. So please keep the current alpha build installed for general work and use this new build specifically to “kick the tires” and help us find any bugs we've not yet found. (Please post any bugs you find on our forums at http://www.brashmonkey.com/forum until we clean up all the bugs off the bugtracker from the previous version which no longer apply to this new build )

Also note, while this new pre-beta has some great new features like individual time-lines per object, and super-easy bone-parenting, its still missing several features that the previous build has. Don't worry though, all these features (such as onion skin and IK locking) and more will be in future updates which will be appearing as frequently and expeditiously as possible, on our way to version 1.0.

Here's a list of features available in the previous version, but not yet finished, and which will be appearing soon in future releases...and most of these will be enhanced over the current alpha:

1) Onion Skin

2) IK Bone locking

3) Setting an objects alpha level (opacity)

4) Copy and paste of objects and key-frames

5) Setting play-back speed

6) Projects with non-persistent objects may not load correctly

We don't consider any of these features to be optional, and they are all at the top of the priority list as of now. At this point in development, however, given the delay, the demand for a more stable and speedy version, the need for a greater volume of testers, and especially our promise to release it today, we are providing this version in it's current state.

Some tips on some of the new stuff:

As I mentioned above, parenting objects and bones now works differently, Just click a bone to select it, then hold the “B” key and left-click on any sprite or other bone to assign them to the bone you initially selected. While holding "B", child objects of the currently selected bone will be fully opaque, while non-children will be half-transparent.

Also of note, are the multiple timelines which can be viewed by expanding the timeline window, and the default pivot points for images, which can be managed by double clicking an image file in the file palette, or right clicking on the pivot handle while a single sprite is selected.

Shortly after the next update release we'll make a new videos explaining the basic use of Spriter featuring this new build, along with it's new functionality. As the 1.0 features are fully fleshed out we will be adding help features into the program.

With the small team of testers we were able to squash all bugs shortly after being reported, but there are features that were added only hours ago, and the Mac and Linux versions haven't had their fair share of testing yet. If you find bugs, please report them. Also, I'd like to state my intent to change the basic release schedule to something more loose and regular than before the arm saga. Unfortunately, a massive restructuring of the program coincided with my injuries which caused this long delay. From here until 1.0, we will no longer be consolidating builds into large increments, so rest assured you won't have to wait for important bug fixes, and new features should arrive fairly regularly up to and beyond 1.0.

A few more things of note.

Mac users, you will find two versions you can install. SpriterGL uses openGL and is much faster, but if your Mac has display issues, the regular Spriter version should remedy this. In the future this will be a setting in the program, but in the interest of not causing further delays, it's split into two files for now.

ChangeLog:

[*:2a3lnkg8]Multiple timelines.
[*:2a3lnkg8]Massive engine overhaul with exponential performance and stability increase.
[*:2a3lnkg8]Less resource intensive.
[*:2a3lnkg8]Default pivot points for images.
[*:2a3lnkg8]Easier to understand and use bone parenting/reparenting system
[*:2a3lnkg8]Tons of groundwork layed under the hood for some amazing (unannounced) features that will arrive soon.
[*:2a3lnkg8]Completely overhauled Export To Png functionality (just try it)
[*:2a3lnkg8]Fix of visual artifacting for transformed images. Images now appear super smoothed (the option to turn off smoothing will arrive in a future version)
[*:2a3lnkg8]UI reskinned to be cooler

We can't thank you enough for your patience and support, and as always we are forever grateful to our backers, and pre-orderers. We are back in action, and this is just a small taste of what's to come.

-Edgar and Mike @ Brashmonkey

Windows

Mac

Linux

[PedroParadella]

Hey i have one question.

Can i use the Spriter pro 1.0 in 2 pcs (all my pcs)? Cuz i develop to IOS and Windows, and i need the tool on my mac and my pc.

[Tap]

Interface is looking good, but here are a few things I noticed in the first 10 minutes of messing around:

1. When the project folder has subfolders, the interface defaults to the object palette instead of the file palette, which may confuse people. It almost had me thinking subfolders were not supported. lol

2. Clicking the timeline does not actually display the current frame number. I have to drag the bar to update that number.

3. Old SCML files do not seem to load at all, and there are no visible feedback messages. It should at least pop-up a "Current version does not load projects" message.

4. Loading a new SCML file that you just saved will crash the application every single time regardless of what you saved. I tried saving just 1 frame with 1 object, then 2 objects, then 2 frames with 2 objects, nothing loaded, crashed every time.

Some good things, though:

1. Delete key actually works on the timeline now. I can finally delete frames again! I was unable to do so in later alpha versions.

2. Background color options are superb. I love customizing and tinkering with settings. You should add some options for that grid line

3. Most of the old features remain unchanged and very familiar to me. Change is good, but I like that it's not completely alien.

Some other personal requests:

1. Middle-click the canvas area to pan the view. I hate dragging scroll bars. Granted not many people will need this feature, and I probably won't, neither.

2. Right-click the canvas for grid and snap options. At least put then in the file bar options somewhere. I would like, for example, to turn off the center line.

Good work so far. I hope the application continues to progress and eventually rivals Spine as a stable and feature-rich, object-oriented animation tool.

[Pfaeff]

Good things:

1. The new interface looks really nice :).

2. Setting the background-color is really useful.

3. It's ultra cool that the pivot point element automatically changes its size, so it's harder to accidentally resize the image instead of setting the pivot point.

Some suggestions:

1. I personally find the replay buttons to be too small. It would also be nice, if spacebar (or later a customizable hotkey) could be used to play/pause the animation.

2. As Tap mentioned, middle-clicking the canvas should allow for dragging. That would improve the navigation by a huge amount. Using the scroll-bars is very annoying indeed. It would be great, if those could be controlled using the arrow keys.

3. I really like the fact that the Z-order is now top to bottom instead of the other way round. It would be nice to have the same ordering in the hierarchy.

4. It would be cool if you could just drag images from your file explorer onto the file palette. Those would then either be linked or copied into the project directory.

One bug:

If you drag an image from the file palette to the Z-order gui element, it will appear in the editor, but won*t show up in the Z-order list. This leads to strange effects and can even (and most likely will) cause the application to crash (even after removing the object).

I have yet to try the new export feature, but it looks promising :).

[lucid]

Hey i have one question.

Can i use the Spriter pro 1.0 in 2 pcs (all my pcs)? Cuz i develop to IOS and Windows, and i need the tool on my mac and my pc.

Yes. We will make the licensing options more obvious after we send out registration keys in late April, but you can either install at a single machine for multiple users, or multiple machines for a single user. So if you buy it for yourself, and only you are using it, but you have a mac, a pc, and a laptop, you are free to install on all your machines with a single license.

Interface is looking good, but here are a few things I noticed in the first 10 minutes of messing around:

3. Old SCML files do not seem to load at all, and there are no visible feedback messages. It should at least pop-up a "Current version does not load projects" message.

4. Loading a new SCML file that you just saved will crash the application every single time regardless of what you saved. I tried saving just 1 frame with 1 object, then 2 objects, then 2 frames with 2 objects, nothing loaded, crashed every time.

Sounds like you're saying no SCML files load at all. Have you tried the monster example file? I'm not having a crash on load. Could you please give me your OS specs? Also, it does load old projects unless they have nonpersistent objects. I will most likely fix this issue before adding a warning message.

...

2. As Tap mentioned, middle-clicking the canvas should allow for dragging. That would improve the navigation by a huge amount. Using the scroll-bars is very annoying indeed. It would be great, if those could be controlled using the arrow keys.

Some other personal requests:

1. Middle-click the canvas area to pan the view. I hate dragging scroll bars. Granted not many people will need this feature, and I probably won't, neither.

Thanks for the suggestions guys, this particular request though is already there. If you hold the space bar while hovering the canvas, the left mouse button function is changed from selection to scrolling the view

[Pfaeff]

...

2. As Tap mentioned, middle-clicking the canvas should allow for dragging. That would improve the navigation by a huge amount. Using the scroll-bars is very annoying indeed. It would be great, if those could be controlled using the arrow keys.

Some other personal requests:

1. Middle-click the canvas area to pan the view. I hate dragging scroll bars. Granted not many people will need this feature, and I probably won't, neither.

Thanks for the suggestions guys, this particular request though is already there. If you hold the space bar while hovering the canvas, the left mouse button function is changed from selection to scrolling the view

Thank you, I didn't know that :). I'd prefer to scroll using the middle mouse button, though. Many programs do it this way and you rarely need to use middle and left mouse at the same time. Having to use both hands is a bit fiddly.

I really like the way it is done in Inkscape:

Mouse wheel - Scroll up and down

Ctrl + Mouse wheel - Zoom

Middle Mouse - Drag

EDIT:

Further Bugs:

Moved the bug list here.

Further Suggestion:

When creating a new keyframe, if the animated object didn't have a keyframe in the last created overall keyframe, set one automatically, so it won't start the newly created animation at the last create keyframe for this object (which might be frame 0 in many cases). Deleting this keyframe is easier than rearranging the object to prevent weird stuff from happening.

If copying keyframes works in the future, this is less of a problem, though. Another solution would be to be able to manually create additional keyframes that just copy the values from the respective previous ones.

[PedroParadella]

Hey i have one question.

Can i use the Spriter pro 1.0 in 2 pcs (all my pcs)? Cuz i develop to IOS and Windows, and i need the tool on my mac and my pc.

Yes. We will make the licensing options more obvious after we send out registration keys in late April, but you can either install at a single machine for multiple users, or multiple machines for a single user. So if you buy it for yourself, and only you are using it, but you have a mac, a pc, and a laptop, you are free to install on all your machines with a single license.

Thanks for answering. That is what i needed =). And job on this tool, it is very awesome!

[jayderyu]

Just to let you know. I found if not a bug, but a compatability problem.

The File Pallette system doesn't work over a network. I do most of my project over a network. But unfortunaly Spriter just doesn't player well.

My server is WindowsXP and the Client is on Windows7. This is something that would be great if can be ready for Spriter 1.0

[blurymind]

your linux build is amazingly tight! Testing spriter on three linux distros from three distro families and it just runs out of the box without complaining about any missing libraries on all three.

Looking at its folder all I found was the small executable file and two libqt static libraries included in the plugins folder.

Running from terminal is giving me debug messages as it should too!

Thats a pretty damn good port. :)

you should feature it on the ubuntu software centre market and steam market when it hits stable. More people need to discover it!

[ricky.ngk]

Hi,

In new version, I can not find object property box anymore (textbox for x, y, anchor, alpha, ...) Do you have a plan to add it again in next version?

Another bug: when I press "a", alpha controller appears, but I cannnot turn it off later.

[Mike at BrashMonkey]

Hi ricky.ngk,

Don't worry, The object property dialogue will be reappearing in an update in the near future. The alpha control is just not finished, which is why you can't get rid of it once you bring it up.

-Mike at BrashMonkey

[Haveconquest]

I simply want to marry this program, random crashes, missing functionality.. and all. : ]

Amazin' work so far folks, will try to write up more comprehensive stuff about my findings with further testing, I get the feeling most of what I've been experiencing is either already on the chopping block or has been addressed by someone else already.

-HC

[gokiman]

Hello

This version crashes pretty frequently. especially when dealing with sprites.

i also find the bone interaction buttons is also more understandable in the alpha version, this version is more minimalist which is good but i dunno where to interact. hope the tutorial will come out soon :geek:

the layer style bone hierarchy window is also rarely working right, when i want a bone out of a parent by dragging it out of the parent. it just keeps coming back to the old parent, just once it works out right.

I suggest you give the flip transform option, so we can reuse single sprites more effectively.

hope you guys finish it perfectly, this program is awseome

[Pfaeff]

Selecting a default pivot point doesn't seem to work. It always resets to default for me. The pivot point editor window also doesn't stay inside Spriter's main window. When used in fullscreen, it is practically not usable.

I also have one question on this topic: If I'd be able to set default pivot points and then replace an image during my animation, will the new image be aligned in such a way that its pivot point matches that of its predecessor? That would be great for stuff like exchangeable weapons/equipment in cases where the images don't have the same size.

[lucid]

Thanks everyone for the input.

@jayderyu do you mean your folder that should be showing up in the file palette are on a separate machine? And if so, did it work on the previous version?

@blurymind that's great news. Thanks for testing. I haven't had the opportunity, and lack the setup at the moment to test multiple distros.

@rickyngk, yes, and I meant to remove that shortcut for the unfinished alpha controls before release.

@Haveconquest, thank you, and I can assure you that Spriter wants to marry your animation as well. Seriously, that looks fantastic.

@Gokimon, flip will be coming at some point closer to 1.0. Also, we were able to squash all reproduceable reported crashes in the private testing forum. There's a good chance you're using a workflow no one in the private forums did, and all of your crashes are stemming from a specific action or combination of actions. If you can narrow down exactly what causes it, I can probably fix it very quickly and put out a hotfix for it. Also, please include your OS. Up to this point 99% of testing was on the Windows version. I'll see if I can reproduce the hierarchy window not working. I have a few theories, one of which could just be the OS. Also, Gokimon, we do need a new tutorial, but for now, the ik locking controls are disabled, holding shift will engage ik for the bone you're changing and it's parent. Left Click dragging near the tip changes angle, dragging near the base to transform position. Hold Control(or Command on Mac), to view the resize controls. I know transforming from edge as opposed to pivot is not optimal, and will be fixed soon. Hold B to choose/unchoose children for the currently selected bone.

@Pfaeff Do you have a multiple monitor setup? That caused the off-screen bug for one user, but we weren't able to determine if it was related to the resetting the default pivot (the same user was the only one experiencing that problem) before the deadline. I setup another monitor today on my system for further testing. Also, not sure if it will make it for the next build, but I'll set up a file system watcher to handle the addition of new images during a session. And finally, for the users that it works for, that's exactly how the default pivot points function, including with the realtime image switching strip, and one of the main purposes. When you switch images the pivot point stays in place, with the alternate images shifting to keep it aligned.

[Pfaeff]

I have a dual monitor setup, indeed. The behaviour (popup not staying inside the frame) is the same if using a smaller window, though.

[lucid]

Started a thread specifically for bugs here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11213&p=16257#p16257

[jayderyu]

@jayderyu do you mean your folder that should be showing up in the file palette are on a separate machine? And if so, did it work on the previous version?

ok. when a new project is started with images already in folders or root of the project folder. There are no images. When I put images/folders in the root folder of an already existing project. There are no folder or images.

this is a root spriter project location in the folder title. The scml file droust.scml sits in that location

\\networkgroup\ServerDrive\team_projects\Draoust_assets\spriters\draoust

under draoust

...\draoust

title.jpg

credits.jpg

\dragonparts\head.jpg

\dragonparts\body.jpg

the result is a complete empty file pallet. There isn't and never was anything. Any images I put in have to be dragged and dropped.

Also there is no prior working either. It didn't just break. I just didn't know how or what file pallet was until watching the video again. Then when I watched with more attention I saw all the images in the file pallate. I saw that you can highlight an object and will see a object bar of images to swap.

So after that realization I moved the project to test on a local drive(not network) and it all worked as should be. It's just a simple case that Spriter doesn't use the networking call directory structure. It just seem to use drive reference.

"\\networkgroup\"

I suspect this is what breaks it. it's the network reference for windows and Spriter doesn't handle it.

It would be fantastic if this could be working for 1.0 :)