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Export to specific sized frames


antix

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Hi. I just purchased Spriter Pro and the platform and adventure art packs. They are cool and contain so many of the animations I would like to use in my game. I can not figure out how to export the frames as 64x64 sprites however.

 

When I go to the export options there are some random things that I seem to have to manipulate. I really want to export the frames so that each one is no bigger than 64x64 pixels and contain all the graphic, not some silly clipped version. How is this accomplished? It seems there are no sane options to select say a pixel frame size and export all frames.

 

There seems to be no display in the program that tells you how big the biggest frame is or any feature to show a grid or bounding box even.

 

Am I missing something simple or is Spriter really not that good when it comes time to export? Have I just thrown away over $100 on a lemon?

 

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You'd need to make sure your animations never exceed that clipping size if you don't want them clipped. The reason people use same-

size frame sprite-sheets is due to a lack of support for an atlas (some form of text file that describes all frames, their positions, rotation etc)...so you can;t just have a program like Spriter move the position of each frame to best try to squeeze it into a 64x64 pixel limit, because then each frame of your animation would jiggle all over the pace compared to the previous and later frames. (due to not having data for how to re-position each frame as it displays it.)

 

When I need to animate within a specific cropping size, I add a rectangular image at that size as a guide and then lock it.. Once all the animations are done, I delete that guide image. This will help make sure your animations are never so big they get cropped.




The next thing you need to do is learn how to set the export to use "custom rect(angle)" for the animation trimming. The numbers are based on the intersection of the horizontal and vertical guides in the canvas of Spriter... (the hot-"spot")

If your sprite is centered in the canvas (relative to that intersection of those guide lines) and you want it cropped to 64x64 pixels per frame, you'd choose:

 

top=-32

left=-32

right=32

bottom=32

 

cheers.

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Thanks for your explanation Mike, but I don't understand why you are suggesting I use some guide image when I would not know the dimensions that would need to be.

 

I'm not keen on using TexturePacker because I didn't know when I purchased this program that I would need to use another program to make this program work as advertised.

 

I noticed that I can drag lines from the margins and move them around to make a pseudo bounding box, theselines can be copied to all frames. I was going to try that as a solution but then discovered that it is not possible to copy those lines to al frames in all animations *sigh*

 

I then had a thought of creating one huge animation containing all the frames from the other animations but there doesn't seem to be any ability to copy/paste frames between animations.

 

What I have noticed is that when I select all objects in any frame of any animation, each and every one gets a little bounding box drawn around it. So spriter knows how big each object is...

Since this happens, would it not be quite easy to calculate a bounding box that encompases all objects in the frame? And then would it not be quite simple to calculate the largest bounding box for the animation and show that visually? And also even display onscreen somewhere the dimensions of that bounding box in pixels? And then be able to show the largest bounding box for all animations? Surely thats not rocket science!

 

Hell, the program doesn't even save all of the export settings when I save the project so if when I bugger about getting those right, I have to manually record them if I ever want to use them again!

 

All I want is for all of my sprites to fit into and be centered inside a 64x64 square image. How faffing hard is that to accomplish in this program? Right now that seems to be impossible.

 

I'm very unhappy with the product and feel I have indeed purchased a lemon :(

 

quick edit: When I export the frames to be small the resulting image is pixelated and blotchy :mad:

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I'm not keen on using TexturePacker because I didn't know when I purchased this program that I would need to use another program to make this program work as advertised.

 

 

 

So you don`t want to use another program and expect one software to do everything for you? You are in a wrong line of work buddy. 

 

 

 

All I want is for all of my sprites to fit into and be centered inside a 64x64 square image. How faffing hard is that to accomplish in this program? Right now that seems to be impossible.

 

I'm very unhappy with the product and feel I have indeed purchased a lemon  :(

 

And all I want is a program that I click a button and my animation are made as best as possible. I don`t understand what you are complaining about, how do you expect the program to fit everything in a 64x64 box?! Why don`t you use a sprite that actually fits into that box?

 

 

 

Hell, the program doesn't even save all of the export settings when I save the project so if when I bugger about getting those right, I have to manually record them if I ever want to use them again!

 

 

 

 

 

It does, it always saves the last export options you have used.

 

 

 

 

I'm very unhappy with the product and feel I have indeed purchased a lemon  :(

 

 

 

ahhhh, kids these days...

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Thanks for your explanation Mike, but I don't understand why you are suggesting I use some guide image when I would not know the dimensions that would need to be.

I'm confused. I though you said you knew you want to make sure the animation frames are 64x64 and don't get cropped. Did I miss something?

I'm not keen on using TexturePacker because I didn't know when I purchased this program that I would need to use another program to make this program work as advertised.

Spriter does not require you to own Texture Packer in order to do anything we advertise, unless we mentioned it supports TexturePacker integration which obviously requires TexturePacker.(If anything was not carefully worded or misleading on our website, Steam page etc, please let me know and I'll fix it asap). It certainly does not require texture packer to export animations at 64x64 frames. The trick is making sure the animations are not cropped. This is the animators responsibility. There is no magic feature that can make this happen for you... either its going to get cropped, or you carefully animated to make sure the animation is never bigger than or outside that 64x64 pixel area. This is why I suggested using a guide.

I noticed that I can drag lines from the margins and move them around to make a pseudo bounding box, these lines can be copied to all frames. I was going to try that as a solution but then discovered that it is not possible to copy those lines to all frames in all animations *sigh*

These are guide lines... they are indeed currently for each animation and not across the entire project. I'll talk to Edgar about adding a feature to make the guides universal across the project or an entity.. but this won't happen for a while.. In the mean-time a guide image is a very simple solution requiring very little work.

I then had a thought of creating one huge animation containing all the frames from the other animations but there doesn't seem to be any ability to copy/paste frames between animations.

You can copy a frame by clicking inside the canvas, pressing control+shift+c and then pressing control+P in the canvas where you want the frame pasted. BUT, even doing this will NOT make all animations fit within specific pixel dimensions like 64x64 without some frames being cropped off... did I misunderstand... are you not after SPECIFIC pixel dimensions, only the arbitrary dimensions if the biggest frame of all of them for an entire character? I'll talk to Edgar about allowing for export of entire entities or sets of animations onto a SINGLE sprite sheet. This would solve that problem if that's the case...but this too can't happen in the very near future.

What I have noticed is that when I select all objects in any frame of any animation, each and every one gets a little bounding box drawn around it. So spriter knows how big each object is...

Since this happens, would it not be quite easy to calculate a bounding box that encompases all objects in the frame? And then would it not be quite simple to calculate the largest bounding box for the animation and show that visually? And also even display onscreen somewhere the dimensions of that bounding box in pixels? And then be able to show the largest bounding box for all animations? Surely thats not rocket science!

No, it's not rocket science at all... nor were most of the features everyone already uses and enjoys and benefits from in Spriter, nor will be the many more features we'll add in the future, including features like what you are saying you need. As mentioned above, we'll do our best to accommodate as many work-flows and needs as possible as we go... but it all takes time, and sometimes what you want might not get implemented until sometime after you or someone else asks for it.. especially when we're busy implementing lots of other features.

Hell, the program doesn't even save all of the export settings when I save the project so if when I bugger about getting those right, I have to manually record them if I ever want to use them again!

If it's not remembering a setting then that's a bug. Please report exactly which settings are not being remembered and we'll fix that as soon as we can.

 

All I want is for all of my sprites to fit into and be centered inside a 64x64 square image. How faffing hard is that to accomplish in this program? Right now that seems to be impossible.

I've already tried to explain before that to do this, you need to carefully create your animations so no frame goes outside that 64x64 boundary, otherwise cropping will occur....in ANY program. Please show me another program anywhere that can export any animation no mater what its dimensions and no matter how much any specific frame goes outside the boundary to a perfect 64x64 size without cropping or scaling. IF all frames are no bigger than 64x64, a program could theoretically do it, but like I said, you would then need Atlas data explaining to your game engine the exact offset of each frame otherwise it would jitter all over the placeduring playback. Do you understand these facts? Maybe I'm missing something or misunderstanding what you're saying?

I'm very unhappy with the product and feel I have indeed purchased a lemon :(

 

quick edit: When I export the frames to be small the resulting image is pixelated and blotchy :mad:

I'm sorry you're unhappy. With proper feedback and patience Spriter will better fit your needs and improve over time, and everyone also, with patience and an open mind can learn to make much better use of already existing features and tools to meet their needs.

Are you exporting a large animation to 64x64 pixels? Are you aware that 64x64 is very low-res and pixelated by its very nature? You're welcome to try any program you'd like such as Irfanview (which is free) to batch reduce your images AFTER exporting them from Spriter at full size.. you might find a program with scaling options that can better suit your needs, but I can tell you now, as a 10 plus year veteran pixel artist, at 64x64 resolution, hand pixel-polishing of your frames is almost always needed.

If you find a program out there that better suits your animating, exporting, cropping needs then please do let us know which program it is so we can learn from it and improve Spriter for future users.

If you've purchased Spriter Pro and wish to discontinue using it, we'd be happy to refund you and rescind the license.. just email mike@brashmonkey.com with proof of purchase email receipts or screen-grabs from Steam etc and I'll be happy to take care of that for you.

cheers.

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I'm confused. I though you said you knew you want to make sure the animation frames are 64x64 and don't get cropped. Did I miss something?

Spriter does not require you to own Texture Packer in order to do anything we advertise, unless we mentioned it supports TexturePacker integration which obviously requires TexturePacker.(If anything was not carefully worded or misleading on our website, Steam page etc, please let me know and I'll fix it asap). It certainly does not require texture packer to export animations at 64x64 frames. The trick is making sure the animations are not cropped. This is the animators responsibility. There is no magic feature that can make this happen for you... either its going to get cropped, or you carefully animated to make sure the animation is never bigger than or outside that 64x64 pixel area. This is why I suggested using a guide.

These are guide lines... they are indeed currently for each animation and not across the entire project. I'll talk to Edgar about adding a feature to make the guides universal across the project or an entity.. but this won't happen for a while.. In the mean-time a guide image is a very simple solution requiring very little work.

You can copy a frame by clicking inside the canvas, pressing control+shift+c and then pressing control+P in the canvas where you want the frame pasted. BUT, even doing this will NOT make all animations fit within specific pixel dimensions like 64x64 without some frames being cropped off... did I misunderstand... are you not after SPECIFIC pixel dimensions, only the arbitrary dimensions if the biggest frame of all of them for an entire character? I'll talk to Edgar about allowing for export of entire entities or sets of animations onto a SINGLE sprite sheet. This would solve that problem if that's the case...but this too can't happen in the very near future.

No, it's not rocket science at all... nor were most of the features everyone already uses and enjoys and benefits from in Spriter, nor will be the many more features we'll add in the future, including features like what you are saying you need. As mentioned above, we'll do our best to accommodate as many work-flows and needs as possible as we go... but it all takes time, and sometimes what you want might not get implemented until sometime after you or someone else asks for it.. especially when we're busy implementing lots of other features.

If it's not remembering a setting then that's a bug. Please report exactly which settings are not being remembered and we'll fix that as soon as we can.

 

I've already tried to explain before that to do this, you need to carefully create your animations so no frame goes outside that 64x64 boundary, otherwise cropping will occur....in ANY program. Please show me another program anywhere that can export any animation no mater what its dimensions and no matter how much any specific frame goes outside the boundary to a perfect 64x64 size without cropping or scaling. IF all frames are no bigger than 64x64, a program could theoretically do it, but like I said, you would then need Atlas data explaining to your game engine the exact offset of each frame otherwise it would jitter all over the placeduring playback. Do you understand these facts? Maybe I'm missing something or misunderstanding what you're saying?

I'm sorry you're unhappy. With proper feedback and patience Spriter will better fit your needs and improve over time, and everyone also, with patience and an open mind can learn to make much better use of already existing features and tools to meet their needs.

Are you exporting a large animation to 64x64 pixels? Are you aware that 64x64 is very low-res and pixelated by its very nature? You're welcome to try any program you'd like such as Irfanview (which is free) to batch reduce your images AFTER exporting them from Spriter at full size.. you might find a program with scaling options that can better suit your needs, but I can tell you now, as a 10 plus year veteran pixel artist, at 64x64 resolution, hand pixel-polishing of your frames is almost always needed.

If you find a program out there that better suits your animating, exporting, cropping needs then please do let us know which program it is so we can learn from it and improve Spriter for future users.

If you've purchased Spriter Pro and wish to discontinue using it, we'd be happy to refund you and rescind the license.. just email mike@brashmonkey.com with proof of purchase email receipts or screen-grabs from Steam etc and I'll be happy to take care of that for you.

cheers.

 

Not my topic, but I am currently trying to do the same thing antix was (or I think so): Take my large animation and shrink it down to a smaller size...hoping it would still be just as detailed and clear. I read your post here and it makes sense now that I'd need to polish the resized image after shrinking it. At first I thought I was doing something wrong lol. Thanks for the help. 

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  • 2 years later...

@antix I'm new to Spriter too, but it's super useful. I don't actually use it to it's full potential, but I am making a game that uses 96 x 96 sprites. Here's how I did it (pretty sure it's not the quickest, but it worked for me!):

I created a "standing" sprite as 32 x 32 in Paint.net (free) using body parts. I then resized the entire sprite way bigger than I needed (nearest neighbour to preserve pixels) and saved the body parts separately. I then imported them into Spriter and created my animations. I exported to PNG as 'trim rect to animation' which means nothing gets cropped, but it does mean I had to do some post-production work to do. This was tricky, and (me being me) probably made it more technical than it should have been.

sword.png.7d3cb59b9c0cee0c17e623cce117f070.pngHere is the full size sword from Spriter.

The first thing you need to do is make all of the frames equal size. Spriter will do this for all frames in one animation (each frame will be the same size), but the animations will not be the same size for the entire entity (e.g. I have 'Standing Left', 'Standing Right' animations etc, but my 'Walking Left' and 'Walking Right' animations are bigger because the limbs are obviously extending etc. Also, my sprites move around in the frame, meaning the head is not always at the top, the arms move and so on, but the one thing I did do was kept the feet at least touching the bottom (I used the axis at 0 in Spriter as the "ground").

The trick is to use another app (I used Paint.Net) to then make your animations all the same size (I adjusted the Canvas Size) - DON'T Resize yet or some of your animations will look smaller than others! Once you have adjusted the frame (or Canvas) size of everything so that everything is the same, then you can resize them down to 64 x 64 without scaling issues. This may or may not be helpful in your particular scenario, but I'm hoping it will at least give you a couple of ideas to on with. I am by no means the last word on this stuff, but I always seem to find a way.

165712830_WalkingRight.gif.5bcfcb8803f70e78b093251cfc05694e.gif 2146752002_StandingRight.gif.81e0e92062735077f33e9bdfb56689a5.gif 

See what I mean? These were exported from Spriter as GIFs and you can see the Canvas size difference (the sprites themselves are the same size, but the animations are different). You could set a custom rectangle in Spriter (like @Mike at BrashMonkey says) but make sure you have it over the size of the biggest animation. If you're working with the exact sprite size in Spriter, you're a braver man than me! Enlarge, animate then scale back down - it's the best way. Yes you need to do some post-production work, but Spriter has still saved you bags of time with the animating, it is such an amazing piece of software.


- Jason, CherryByte™ Software

 

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