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Need help with Character Maps


SymboliC

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Hi,

 

Today I started playing around with character maps for the first time.

 

I've followed the tutorial on this link,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NufHCAHrEdw

 

but when I clicked ok and all the new images have appeared on the stage, I see them they are improperly placed with wrong coordinates and 20-30 pixels far from their respective bones(kind of offset)?... The images are a bit different on size...

 

Is this related to pivot point bug in r4 release or is there another bug reported about character maps?

 

And could you please clarify what are bake and merge functions in character maps?

 

Thanks a lot,

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Hi SymboliC,

 

Make sure of two things:

 

1) Make sure you are using a build of Spriter without bugs related to Pivot points. Edgar already released a hotfix build that should resolve this issue.  If your Spriter is set to check for updates it will tell you the next time you boot Spriter. Download and install the new version.

 

2) Make sure the images you're replacing the original images with in the character map have their default pivot points set in the EXACT same position as the images they are replacing.  This is very easy if the images are the exact same size as the ones you're replacing.  If the new images aare diferenct sizes, then the pivot point must be set by eye to match... for example, if your new head images is bigger, and the original head image had its default pivot point at the base of the skull where the neck would attach, then do the same for the new, larger head image.

 

That should resolve your issue.

 

Cheers,
Mike at BrashMonkey

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Hi Mike,

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I've downloaded the latest update 4.1, copied the pivot points and then tried... now everything seems much better...

 

The only thing I would suggest (I don't know if this is already present) is it would be better if we were able to copy&paste multiple pivot points at once. Of course this is handy if one is working with character maps and the images are named all the same way and therefore appearing in the same order in image palette or else this would be useless since the wrong pivot info would be copied to wrong images.

 

I tried selecting all images and copying pivot info and then selected the new images to paste the pivot info on them but this did not work... so I did it one by one...

 

Regards,

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Hi Mike,

 

In case you need additional reference, regarding copying & pasting pivots for multiple images all at once, I tried it again after I read this piece in the manual...

 

"You might end up with several images that use the same size, especially in order for image swapping purposes.  In this case, don’t worry, you won’t have to set the same custom default  pivot point ot them all manually.  Just set the custom default pivot point to one of them, then click the “Copy Default Pivots†button Under the “Currently Equipped Tools†section of the Palette, then multiselect all the images you want to have the same default pivot point and click the “Paste Default Pivots†button."

 

But when I checked the new images' pivot points, I saw that all pivots were placed at "0,0"??

Is this some sort of bug with copying&pasting multiple pivots all at once which is similar similar to r4 bug or did I take the above paragraph from the manual completely wrong?...

 

Cheers,

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SymboliC,

 

It sounds like you're trying to copy a pivot point with multiple images selected, then paste to another group of multiple images. You can only copy one image's pivot point, then paste that pivot point to one or more images, as explained in the section of the manual you quoted. Can you try that and let us know if it works?

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SymboliC,

 

It sounds like you're trying to copy a pivot point with multiple images selected, then paste to another group of multiple images. You can only copy one image's pivot point, then paste that pivot point to one or more images, as explained in the section of the manual you quoted. Can you try that and let us know if it works?

 

Hi RunnerPack,

 

That's correct I'm trying to copy pivot infos between "multiple body parts" rather than "multiple images". The way you mentioned works as it is also written in the manual.

 

But what I am trying to do is when you have 17 body parts for 4 or more types of entities considering that all the body parts are named the same way(entity1->hand1.png, entity2->hand1.png etc...) and all are same on size but differing in line art and colors, it is a bit overwhelming to copy/paste all the pivot infos from the pilot images to the respective images of other entities one by one...

 

Maybe you would suggest me to first copying hand1.png's pivot info from the pilot model to 4 other models' hand1.png images... and repeat this step for all other body parts...

but this also becomes a bit harder when we have a deep folder structure to navigate for the images through the folders and choosing the new body parts to paste the pivot infos etc...  considering that I have 17 body parts... =/

 

I'd like to be able to copy the pivot info of different parts and paste them to the other entities' body parts. This can be easily achieved IF the images are named all the same way thus they're listed in the same order in the images panel or else this would make things worse.

 

Cheers,

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I agree that it would be nice if the program could magically know what pivot points need to be copied where, but it's not really feasible, is it? There are too many possible combinations of image names, folder names, folder structures, etc. for Edgar to make a simple routine that can do all your work for you ;)

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I agree that it would be nice if the program could magically know what pivot points need to be copied where, but it's not really feasible, is it? There are too many possible combinations of image names, folder names, folder structures, etc. for Edgar to make a simple routine that can do all your work for you ;)

 

Right, but I wish you would consider this for later releases... =)

 

Regarding my suggestion, I've looked through the .scml file once again and saw that the pivot point properties are located like this,

<folder id="3" name="CH1/Ground01/Side">        <file id="0" name="CH1/Ground01/Side/BackFoot.png" width="50" height="122" pivot_x="0.45" pivot_y="0.797753"/>
<folder id="7" name="CH1/Ground02/Side">        <file id="0" name="CH1/Ground02/Side/BackFoot.png" width="50" height="122" pivot_x="0.45" pivot_y="0.797753"/>

and saw that actually every folder of images in the palette has a unique "id" as 3 and 7 in this piece of code... So as long as the file names are exactly the same, thus following the same alphabetical order and therefore having the same "file id" as in the example above, I thought that it wouldn't be too hard to copy the pivot point information between multiple images since it seems like it's a matter of getting info from the folder with id 3, checking if the names&id of files do match and if the condition returns as "true", then the info would be pasted.

But since I'm not a developer, I just speak theoretically... I'm now aware how hard or easy it is to implement such a function...  :roll:

 

Again a feature suggestion from me which is not a priority but a luxury... =)  I think I'm too lazy or my workflow is a bit wrong in some areas...  :mrgreen:

 

This is my first time experimenting with a 2D animation program which is based on sprites&bone system... and we're building our animations for our game with Spriter! I really appreciate you guys for putting so much effort in it!

 

Cheers,

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@SymboliC ,

 

An auto copy and paste of all images pivot points to another folder with same-named and same sized images is definitely feasible and we will definitely add this an a future update.

 

cheers,

Mike at BrashMonkey

 

Thanks Mike!

I'd love to have it in the future releases but the next one... =)

By the way do you plan putting new videos on Youtube?... Because I really enjoy watching them and got so much from each in 2-3 weeks of time since I started using Spriter...

I would like to have a more in-depth look or cool ways to character mapping OR creating reusable animations which would make things easier for beginners like me... 

 

Cheers,

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