![]() Character Setupīefore digging into the actual animation system, lets briefly talk about how our characters are setup. The spreadsheet is authored in LibreOffice Calc and then imported into UE4 to be used by our import tool. ![]() Additional animation assets are also generated in this step, which are used by our animation system to actually play the animations – more on this later. To keep the amount of manual editing to a minimum, the system is also fed with spreadsheets containing useful defaults that are automatically applied to the sprites and flipbooks (such as frame rate, etc.). Once the atlas is imported we end up with multiple folders containing the sprites and flipbooks ready to use. This allowed us to have far more control over both the import process and the rendering of sprites and flipbooks (right now we use Paper2D only for editing and rendering tilemaps). We started out using Paper2D (that, for the uninitiated, is the 2D framework available by default in Unreal Engine 4), but slowly transitioned to a custom solution over time. The next step is (re)importing the atlas into the engine. At the moment we have a single atlas per-character. Texture Packer also works from the command line, so this step can be automated as well. This not only helps lowering texture memory usage, but also keeps the assets tidily organized - which soon becomes a necessity when you have to deal with large amounts of sprites. ![]() If you do any 2D game development and don’t know about Texture Packer, you really need to check it out: it’s a nifty utility that packs multiple sprites into a single file (A.K.A. We then use Texture Packer to compress all the frames in a single texture atlas. □ Our export script also helps us maintaining a strong nomenclature, which is invaluable to avoid the risk of going insane tracking errors, duplicated sprites, etc. Automating error-prone and repetitive tasks is invaluable for the overall workflow, especially for small teams with no fancy QA department. That's a lot of layer groups! From Photoshop To UE4Įxporting all the frames by hand would be madness, so we have a custom Photoshop script that automates the export process and generates a single PNG file out of each animation frame. Each PSD usually contains multiple characters so that it’s easy to use previously created characters as blueprints for a new one. This required some technical setup to allow for quick iteration times: each animation frame is on a separate layer, which is linked to a keyframe in the timeline for easy previewing. It’s important for the design to be as refined as possible at this stage: altering it afterwards requires massive time as it involves editing all the animations frames one by one (a character currently has 162 unique animation frames – and counting!).Īlthough I tried to make him do the jump to a pixel-art drawing software (such as Pro Motion NG or Pyxel Edit), he stubbornly continued to use Photoshop for all the editing. Once the character design is final, he then proceeds to create all the required animations. Otherwise we drop a tear, throw everything away and start over. He then iterates on the design until we have something we like. Guess which concept would've make us win a copyright infringement lawsuit! The process begins with our artist Simone doing some quick sketches of different characters, from which we usually pick the one we like the most. PS: maybe we've been playing a bit too much Dragon Ball FighterZ lately. Introducing a new character in #Guntastic: say hello to the Demonic Koala! #screenshotsaturday #indiedev #gamedev #pixelart #ue4 Split sheet tool.įree texture packer uses mustache template engine.A couple of weeks ago we introduced our fifth character in Guntastic, so I thought it might be a good time to talk about our character creation workflow, from the concept stage to the actual implementation in Unreal Engine 4. Rotation, trimming, multipacking, various export formats (json, xml, css, pixi.js, godot, phaser, cocos2d). Only critical bugs will be fixed.įree texture packer creates sprite sheets for you game or site. IMPORTANT: I don't have time to imporove this app anymore.
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