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Work in Progress / SpriteMe: Easily create 2D sprites from 3D objects

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Hockeykid
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Posted: 22nd Jun 2011 06:23 Edited at: 26th Jun 2011 02:48
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Description:
SpriteMe is a program that allows you to turn your 3D animation models into 2D sprite sheets with ease. With SpriteMe "what you see is what you get" and allows you to create sprites exactly the size you need for your game.

Images:















SpriteMe is still unfinished, it needs some tweaking and community feedback would be helpful. Also, I highly suggest you read the manual (the manual is not completely up to date but will still help).

I've attached a demo version of SpriteMe to this post. The exports of the demo version will have the work "DEMO" pasted across the export along with a red X.

Any feedback is welcome .

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Uncle Sam
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Posted: 22nd Jun 2011 09:48
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Cool idea! Looks like it turned out nicely too. I'm sure I'll be trying this out later.

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maxiqueen123
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Posted: 22nd Jun 2011 12:19
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very cool

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Thraxas
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Posted: 26th Jun 2011 02:50
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This is a great idea. I have lots of 3D models but not many sprites when I want to use them. I'll definitely give this a try.

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tschwarz
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Posted: 27th Jun 2011 23:14
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Been looking for something that would do this for quite awhile. I really hope you continue and release this.

Just doing some simple testing this appears to work very good with many options.

Issues for me so far was the capture area (box) always grabs to the center, meaning if you need to move it a few pixels and click on the box it centers the box at the mouse pointer and when selecting a new texture should have option for "ALL" formats.

Error: when selecting a new texture the program crashed.

I will test more and give you proper results and requests if you want them.

Nice work though.

Shall we play a game?” - Joshua
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Hockeykid
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Posted: 28th Jun 2011 05:01
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Quote: "Just doing some simple testing this appears to work very good with many options. "

Glad you like it

Quote: "Issues for me so far was the capture area (box) always grabs to the center, meaning if you need to move it a few pixels and click on the box it centers the box at the mouse point"


I kept it like this since you can go under the "Render" tab and tweak the X and Y values of the selection box.

Quote: "when selecting a new texture should have option for "ALL" formats. "


I agree, I'll most likely will add in the "All" option.

Quote: "Error: when selecting a new texture the program crashed. "


Could you possibly supply me with some reproduction steps?

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JosephB
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Posted: 28th Jun 2011 18:54
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Very nice and intuitive. Produced two sprite sheets fairly easily. The only trouble I had with the application was viewing the model as the Capture Box is rather small. I did receive an error, Runtime Error 7008: Object does not exist at line 224. Object not found:1, when I went from SpriteMe to the software I use to view BMPs.

An option that might be helpful would allow the user to change the speed of the animation in the preview window.

Thank you and please keep up the excellent work.
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OldPMan
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Posted: 28th Jun 2011 19:37
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Very good idea. Good ideas sometimes all attend.

.....already beside.....
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Hockeykid
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Posted: 29th Jun 2011 02:15 Edited at: 29th Jun 2011 05:50
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Quote: "The only trouble I had with the application was viewing the model as the Capture Box is rather small."


You can change the size of the selection box under the render tab.

Quote: "I did receive an error, Runtime Error 7008: Object does not exist at line 224. Object not found:1, when I went from SpriteMe to the software I use to view BMPs."


This is probably because your BMP viewer resets your computer's resolution, which would cause all the objects, images, cameras etc to be lost because of DirectX.

Quote: "Very good idea."


Thank you !

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tschwarz
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Posted: 29th Jun 2011 04:26
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"Render" tab and tweak the X and Y values of the selection box. When outside the selection area (box) then this is perfect. What I meant was if you click inside the selection area (box) I think it would be better to be able to drag the box around from the coordinates where you clicked. Let's say you click inside the box around 10 pixels down and 10 pixels across. It should allow you to start dragging but instead it first centers the box where ever you clicked the mouse then allows you to drag. ha ha I could have wrote a code sample faster than it took to try to explain what I meant.

"Error: when selecting a new texture the program crashed. " Happens on all models I have tried, one was just a stock floor model and DDS texture from fpsc. The other 3 were animated characters with differnt jpg textures.

I click "Load Object" and load a model .x, I then click "Load Texture Object" select a texture, click open and the program crashes.
"Program has stopped working" An unhandled win32 exception occurred in SpriteMe.exe([3328]
(Unhandled exception at 0x773ae653 in SpriteMe.exe: 0xC0000374: A heap has been corrupted shows in debugger)

If the textures work on other peoples computers I can give it a try on one of my other computers when I get home in a few days. This was tested on Windows7 64 bit ultimate, 6 gigs ram, Intel e8500 3.16 with a nvidia 8800 graphics card if that helps at all.

Shall we play a game?” - Joshua
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Hockeykid
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Posted: 29th Jun 2011 05:50
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Quote: ""Render" tab and tweak the X and Y values of the selection box. When outside the selection area (box) then this is perfect. What I meant was if you click inside the selection area (box) I think it would be better to be able to drag the box around from the coordinates where you clicked. Let's say you click inside the box around 10 pixels down and 10 pixels across. It should allow you to start dragging but instead it first centers the box where ever you clicked the mouse then allows you to drag. ha ha I could have wrote a code sample faster than it took to try to explain what I meant."


Thanks for the suggestion, I made the change and I will say I do like it a lot better !

Quote: ""Error: when selecting a new texture the program crashed. " Happens on all models I have tried, one was just a stock floor model and DDS texture from fpsc. The other 3 were animated characters with differnt jpg textures.

I click "Load Object" and load a model .x, I then click "Load Texture Object" select a texture, click open and the program crashes.
"Program has stopped working" An unhandled win32 exception occurred in SpriteMe.exe([3328]
(Unhandled exception at 0x773ae653 in SpriteMe.exe: 0xC0000374: A heap has been corrupted shows in debugger)"


I still haven't been able to replicate this one, I'll keep trying though. Does this happen always on first attempt, with a fresh project ?

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tschwarz
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Posted: 29th Jun 2011 06:29
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Thank you sir, Don't spend a lot of time on the second one. Let me try it on another PC first in case it's specific to the PC I'm testing on. PS it happens first and everytime. If it still happens it might be my compile is older.

Glad you were able to understand the selecion box suggestion. When I read the post back, it confused me.

Shall we play a game?” - Joshua
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baxslash
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Posted: 29th Jun 2011 14:50
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I recently started something similar for a game I'm working on but the game went far more stylised / cartoony so I shelved the sprite maker.

This looks really good, I doubt any of my code will help you otherwise I'd share it.

Can I suggest you look at parrallel / orthographic projection as an option as the images above would not work very well for an RTS as I think you are suggesting?

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Hockeykid
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Posted: 30th Jun 2011 04:04
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Quote: "Can I suggest you look at parrallel / orthographic projection as an option as the images above would not work very well for an RTS as I think you are suggesting?"


The lights aren't exactly to suggest shadow mapping, more or less to help your sprite match the lighting of your scene. However I originally did want to allow for shadow mapping, but it would break use of shaders since all of the shadow shaders that I know of have to be directly applied to the object, which wouldn't allow you to use other shaders on your object.

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baxslash
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Posted: 30th Jun 2011 10:26
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Quote: "The lights aren't exactly to suggest shadow mapping, more or less to help your sprite match the lighting of your scene. However I originally did want to allow for shadow mapping, but it would break use of shaders since all of the shadow shaders that I know of have to be directly applied to the object, which wouldn't allow you to use other shaders on your object."

That's not what Orthographic projection is about, it's basically viewing the scene with no perspective. When you play a sprite based RTS or RPG the characters do not get smaller as they get further away.

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Hockeykid
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Posted: 30th Jun 2011 11:12
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Quote: "That's not what Orthographic projection is about, it's basically viewing the scene with no perspective. When you play a sprite based RTS or RPG the characters do not get smaller as they get further away."

O, when you said "Orth projection" I though you meant it as orthographic shadow mapping. Anyways, orthographic projection isn't exactly the aim of SpriteMe, the aim of SpriteMe is to allow you to make your 3D objects into 2D sprites.

Though, how exactly do 2D sprtes get smaller as they move "further away", as they have no depth :S?

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baxslash
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Posted: 30th Jun 2011 11:29 Edited at: 30th Jun 2011 11:29
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Quote: "Anyways, orthographic projection isn't exactly the aim of SpriteMe, the aim of SpriteMe is to allow you to make your 3D objects into 2D sprites."

Yes I realise that but what I'm saying is without orthographic projection your images would look odd in a game like the one you show above where the sprites don't get smaller as they go into the distance.

Here are two images showing the same sprite of a woman, one from the top of the screen (further away) and the other from the bottom (closer). They are both 38 pixels high:


If your sprites are created using perspective (FOV) enabled then they may look odd when pasted onto an orthographic tile based background.

I hope that makes sense. Just a suggestion...

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tschwarz
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Posted: 1st Jul 2011 03:51
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FYI: I had nothing to do for a few hours and put your program on my apple laptop using XP emulation software and changing the textures worked fine. So, problem must be my other pc, windows 7 64bit or a combination of the two.

Shall we play a game?” - Joshua
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Hockeykid
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Posted: 2nd Jul 2011 07:05
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Quote: "If your sprites are created using perspective (FOV) enabled then they may look odd when pasted onto an orthographic tile based background."


Ah, that makes more sense. I appreciate you bringing this up, I had actually originally planned on adding an FOV option, but had forgotten to. Thanks for the reminder, I'll make sure this gets put in the final release.

Quote: "I had nothing to do for a few hours and put your program on my apple laptop using XP emulation software and changing the textures worked fine."


That's good news.

Quote: "So, problem must be my other pc, windows 7 64bit or a combination of the two."


Hmm, well that's not good :S. I have Windows 7 64bit so I doubt it has anything to do with that, can you think of any other common traits between your Windows 7 PCs? Maybe some of your GPU settings in the Nvidia Control Panel are causing the issue.

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Kravenwolf
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Posted: 28th Jul 2011 21:37
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Looks very promising, and just in time for AppGameKit Is there any way to change the perspective in which the sprites are taken from the 3D animations? So for example if I'm making a 2D top down shooter, can I can capture the character's anim frames from a top down perspective?

Kravenwolf

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Hockeykid
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Posted: 28th Jul 2011 21:39
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Quote: "Looks very promising, and just in time for AppGameKit Is there any way to change the perspective in which the sprites are taken from the 3D animations? So for example if I'm making a 2D top down shooter, can I can capture the character's anim frames from a top down perspective?
"

Yes, you have full control over the object's X, Y, Z and the camera's X, Y, Z and Angles X, Y, Z

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tschwarz
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Posted: 30th Jul 2011 20:14
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Just curious, are you close to a release date?

Shall we play a game?” - Joshua
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Hockeykid
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Posted: 31st Jul 2011 05:45
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Quote: "Just curious, are you close to a release date?"


Hi Terry,
I spoke with Rick and gave him the latest build with some samples for him to try, but he wanted a video. I'm on vacation at the moment, but I get back in a few days, and as soon as I do I'm going to make the video for him.

Hopefully it shouldn't be to much longer.

Also, I never got a response to my last email to you, did you not get it?

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2Beastmode4u
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Posted: 31st Jul 2011 18:26
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Quote: "and just in time for AGK"


Definitely will be useful tool for some phone games.
Great work hockeykid.


Cheers.

God help me, Please.
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tschwarz
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Posted: 7th Aug 2011 04:54
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I created a couple of sprite sheets with SpriteMe and then created a little IOS app to see how they would look in the Xcode iPhone Simulator. I think they came out pretty darn good. The walking animation was every 2 frames and the spin kink was every 3 frames. I still need to test some of the other features but, thought you and others might like to see what the results look like.



Shall we play a game?” - Joshua
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Duffer
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Posted: 7th Aug 2011 12:59 Edited at: 7th Aug 2011 13:00
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@ Hockeykid,

This looks amazing. Will it do conversions taking in to account lighting? Will it do Isometric? (I'm thinking Isometric 2d RPG etc).

Also, what kind of price are you thinking of?

a long time dabbler with DBC and DBPro with no actual talent but lots of enthusiasm...
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Rampage
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Posted: 7th Aug 2011 13:26
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That looks like 3d pretty much!

Amazing, nifty little program here. Will definitely come in use to me

Regards,

Max
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Kravenwolf
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Posted: 9th Aug 2011 13:35 Edited at: 9th Aug 2011 13:43
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The character shader from Model Pack 52 for planar projected shadows works wonderfully with the program. Really makes the sprites 'pop out' of the background Took a short video to demonstrate (be sure to watch in HD).










Kravenwolf

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baxslash
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Posted: 9th Aug 2011 13:48
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Nice work!

I might have to rethink one of my games to use this technique. It would run a lot quicker... hmmm...

Nice work Kravenwolf! That's a great example

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2Beastmode4u
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Posted: 15th Aug 2011 23:10 Edited at: 18th Aug 2011 02:03
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Well, with the release of AppGameKit, I just had to test it out with SpriteME_DEMO.

[Download Attached]

Seemed to work just fine.


Cheers.
EDIT:
Download fixed.

God help me, Please.

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2Beastmode4u
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Posted: 19th Aug 2011 02:51
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Any news on how long until release?


Cheers.

God help me, Please.
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WickedVixen
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Posted: 19th Aug 2011 15:53
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Question: Does SpriteMe require all models to be in it's MODELS folder to be loaded into the program?
I have tried to load the same model twice, once from the FILE menu and once from the Tabbed selection. Both times the program crashes with an "Object not found" error. It's a .X wedge ship file that a friend built for me.

Win7 Ultimate x86. nVidia GS M 8400. Other stuff works, other than SpriteMe of course, and I've not had any real issues with displaying graphics using other programs or converting models from .X to .blend or to formats other than .DBO.

Any suggestions?

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tschwarz
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Posted: 20th Aug 2011 05:06
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Anitarquious I,

The models do not have to be in the model dir. Have you tried other models and do they load?

Shall we play a game?” - Joshua
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Hockeykid
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Posted: 20th Aug 2011 06:03
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Quote: "Any news on how long until release?"


Rick wanted to see a video of it in action, so far I unfortunately haven't had time to make it :/.

Quote: "Question: Does SpriteMe require all models to be in it's MODELS folder to be loaded into the program?
I have tried to load the same model twice, once from the FILE menu and once from the Tabbed selection. Both times the program crashes with an "Object not found" error. It's a .X wedge ship file that a friend built for me."


No, the model does not have to be in the "Models" folder. Those folders are just there to make organization easier. If you can provide me with the exact error give, I might be able to give you a more helpful answer.

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Hockeykid
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Posted: 4th Sep 2011 19:50
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Hi guys,
Its been a little while since anyone's posted on here. Just wanted to give a bit of an update:

SpriteMe is basically done (the demo is not made off of the most up-to-date source). I've started to make that video for Rick, so far I've it's been giving me some trouble, but I'm hoping to have it done soon!

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Hockeykid
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Posted: 9th Sep 2011 07:27
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SpriteMe is being sold! Go here for more details:

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=189201&b=5

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