Spriter - Vanillaware-style 2D Game Animation Tool

[Candescence]

I'd like to spread the word about this tool, which is currently on Kickstarter and has reached 65% of its $25,000 funding goal with 26 days to go as of this time of writing, and it sorely deserves attention, because there is simply no other game development tool of its kind, and it could be a valuable tool for 2D game developers, fangame developers included.

Anyone who has played Vanillaware games like Odin Sphere and Muramasa: The Demon Blade would remember the smooth, detailed animation present in those games. Or, say, the 2D Rayman games, especially Origins. Rather than using singular images for each frame of animation, such games use multiple parts for each character, each with multiple re-usable images that can be blended together in an animation, resulting in animations that are very smooth while at the same time allowing artists to increase character detail without needing to take more time with both. It also has performance benefits as well, as this animation style heavily reduces the required amount of VRAM needed, as only the images for the parts used in animations are stored in VRAM, which is much less than if an entire animation with the same amount of frames done in singular images, allowing for much more animations and frames without increasing VRAM use.

Problem is, there isn't a dedicated piece of software specifically designed for these kinds of animations that has been released to the public - well, until now. Spriter, developed by Brashmonkey, a two-man team - one animator, Mike Parent, who has worked with companies like Gameloft, Wayforward, and GluMobile, and one programmer, Edgar Muniz, also known as "Lucid", someone I know personally on the Scirra forums, who has developed Construct plugins, and is a very awesome guy. They were originally working on two separate pieces of software with different intentions - Mike was working on Spriter, and Lucid was working on his own stuff, heavily inspired by Ubisoft's own UbiArt software, which was used to create Rayman Origins, but then they came together to work on the brand new and improved Spriter.

Not only are these guys developing an awesome piece of software to fill in an important niche in 2D game development, they're trying to make the best tool they can, and add features beyond what I described above - such as "character maps", being able to swap different kinds of parts, such as weapons, clothing/armor, and various other things, allowing for stuff like customizable characters in runtime, character skins, randomized NPCs, and so on, in ways that would be more or less infeasible with traditional 2D animation methods. And, beyond that, procedural animations, shapes and variables which can easily expand the possibilities for game animations.

It will use an XML-based format that will allow it to be used in any game engine there is, and Lucid is currently working on a Construct Classic plugin for it, with Construct 2 coming right after, and third parties working on plugins for Torque2d, Unity, Gamemaker, DarkBasic, MultimediaFusion 2, as well as a general C++ API.

And once it's released, the software would simply cost $25 bucks. No, really.

Here's the Kickstarter page, where the beta is also linked for download. If you support more games having smoother, detailed animations and graphics, please support the Kickstarter fund!

[Serephim]

im gonna check this out.

I personally dont think it's actually a....whats the word, "replacement"? For more traditionally done sprites, but what it DOES do is increase the accessibility of doing sprites for games, which is awesome to me. But the applications for bigger animations (like multi-sprite bosses and such) are godlike.

I personally enjoy the feeling of traditional frames to procedural animation any day, but yes, i might end up backing this program and definitely using it at some point.

Edit:

Pro version with:

Construct Classic, Construct 2, and possiblity for C++ API?

Before the donation period is up, im going to end up donating $25 to this. That is amazing. Great find dude.

[DimensionWarped]

Sure, I'll throw them some money. Sounds like a good cause.

EDIT: Hmmm, this seems more about making animations with tweening than it does about actually making raster graphics. I'm not so certain now. I'll wait until I see if can properly implement some of the exporters its talking about.

EDIT2: Trying out the beta made me lose a great deal of interest. I'll just plain wait on this one.

[Candescence]

im gonna check this out.

I personally dont think it's actually a....whats the word, "replacement"? For more traditionally done sprites, but what it DOES do is increase the accessibility of doing sprites for games, which is awesome to me. But the applications for bigger animations (like multi-sprite bosses and such) are godlike.

Well, I never said it was a replacement - traditional animation is still a choice for those who prefer to do it, but this style of animation has its various uses regardless.

EDIT: Hmmm, this seems more about making animations with tweening than it does about actually making raster graphics. I'm not so certain now. I'll wait until I see if can properly implement some of the exporters its talking about.

EDIT2: Trying out the beta made me lose a great deal of interest. I'll just plain wait on this one.

Um... Isn't that more or less what I described? I'm not exactly sure what you were expecting. :/

[DimensionWarped]

I was just sort of hoping for an all purpose spriting tool rather than something that just does tweens.

[Candescence]

It's animation software, not spriting. I swear I made that perfectly clear, it's even in the topic title!

And it does a bit more than simply tweening, obviously, otherwise it would kinda be redundant considering Flash exists.

[DimensionWarped]

I'm not saying you didn't. Just keep in mind what the name of the software is.

[Serephim]

DW's logic is sound, it is somewhat of a misleading name. It should be called something that groups it more with the process of animation rather than actually spriting.

Although i do see where they're going, since it takes way longer to animate a sprite than to draw a frame, most of the "spriting" process is animation anyway

[Candescence]

Yeah, I do see what you mean by that. It is kinda misleading in that way, since it's not an art program...

But at the same time, as Serephim points out, spriting is mostly animating - 'spriting' a single image is technically pixel art. This software creates 'sprites' by assembling multiple image parts and making them move in a proper animation, which you can actually render as singular images if you desire as such, so it technically can be used as a 'spriting' tool.

[TailsSena]

Do sprites really have to be pixel art, though?

[DimensionWarped]

No, but this isn't a program for creating vector graphics either. It's strictly used for arranging and animating graphics that you supply, which means it isn't a standalone tool that you could use to make graphics for a game.

This isn't a bad thing, but it does make me a little more reticent to buy it.

[Asuma]

I wasn't looking around and found this, it's free and open-sourced.

http://demina.codeplex.com/

I'd would buy Spriter, but I don't buy things I think I wouldn't get much use out of.

[Candescence]

From what I've heard, Demina is actually rather limited compared to Spriter, and the video on the page is rather telling when it comes to those limitations.

In any case, Spriter has hit its funding target, and has reached 113% of its target, and rising. Awesome.

Really, one of the main draws of this software for me, personally, is the Character Map feature, which allows for many different things, such as new characters based off an existing set of animations (which can be modified to suit the new character), character skins, and customizable characters. I like traditional animation and all, but that's something you can't do traditionally.

Plus, creating smooth animation is a time-consuming process that also requires more VRAM with each additional frame. Rotoscoping helps, I suppose, and one could use the Ghost Trick method - render 3D models as 2D animations (which makes for some fantastic animations in numerous quantities if you do it right), but it still has some of the same limitations as traditional methods.

[Asuma]

I tired the beta, and to looks like you can export your frames to PNG. Awesome.

Of course, you're going to need more than just basic limbs and a head to make a good character.

[luksamuk]

Can I import other pictures to it so it exports a full spritesheet with equal spaces between the frames? I'm making some experiments and trying to make a XNA Sonic Engine here, so...

[Candescence]

I tired the beta, and to looks like you can export your frames to PNG. Awesome.

Of course, you're going to need more than just basic limbs and a head to make a good character.

Well, of course. Spriter allows you to swap parts mid-animation, so you can have, say, multiple images for the character's head at different angles, expressions, etc. Rayman Origins provides a good example.

Can I import other pictures to it so it exports a full spritesheet with equal spaces between the frames? I'm making some experiments and trying to make a XNA Sonic Engine here, so...

Nope. There is software out there that can do what you're describing, but packing images into a sprite sheet isn't what Spriter does, and I doubt it will anytime soon, if at all.

[Asuma]

You can export the frames and use a tile image program. Might work that way.

[Kessler12]

Looks like something I should give a try. nice find!

[Serephim]

is VRAM consumption by sprites really that serious of an issue? I mean, i can see it obviously being an issue 20, 12, even 7 years ago. But today?

Maybe a game like Muramusa, but...yeah with the shit games have to load texture and shader wise, i cant really see a current gen game being limited by anything other than budget.

[Candescence]

Well, if you're getting into HD levels of image quality, and depending on how many high-quality frames of an animation you have, it might be a problem for some systems. Depends, really. But funny you should mention budget, since this would logically reduce budget on animations since it's easier than drawing entire individual frames, obviously, so it's still a plus.

[Serephim]

Oh well i was just thinking something like Blazblue or King of Fighters wise, where the game loads, on average, about 2200 frames (P1 and P2) of ridiculously huge sprites and effects, not counting whatever special effects you'd have going on. Action games are a bit different i guess, but then again sprite action games rarely average very many animations per character, Skeleton or not...

Im not really arguing whether or not the technique is useful though. Even I think it's completely impractical to sprite environments and obnoxiously huge bosses frame-by-frame.

[Candescence]

Yeah, I hear you. Besides, some games use multiple parts for characters which are blended together rather convincingly to limit the amount of required frames for a character - the more recent Castlevania games do this, for starters. Dracula in Order of Ecclesia has a ludicrous amount of separate parts. It's much more obvious when he forgoes his usual teleporting tactic and starts stomping towards you in the second stage of the fight.

[ila]

Edgar was wearing a My Little Pony shirt. He gets my money.

[Candescence]

Alright, a few updates:

- Demonstrations on various platforms

- A couple of upcoming features described, including "containers", and bone animation (which would basically include bone rotation, which allows automatic 'part change' based on rotation, such as, say, a character's torso facing in various directions.)

- A couple of professional game artists discussing Spriter, including an entire video by Dan Fessler describing the various advantages of the software.

Dan Fessler in particular makes some great points, mainly that Spriter can be used to not only animate characters, but also background aspects, effects, and UI components, tiles, cutscenes, etc. It's a great example on how versatile a tool like this is.