What is Reddit's opinion of Spriter?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Krita 3.0 came out yesterday. It has a really nice animation workflow and paints like photoshop. (And its free)

On the topic of flow, it depends what kind of art you are making. There are two kinds of animation. The first is when you draw every frame separately. The other is where you draw parts of your drawing separately, then attach them to bones and animate the bones.

For the first type the flow is pretty simple, you draw your drawing. You press Add new keyframe. You go to the next frame, and you make changes to your drawing. Then you save that keyframe. You do this multiple times and then you can simply loop through all keyframes to see your animation.

Say for the second type you wanted to animate a character. You would draw its head, legs, arms, body separately. Attach them to virtual bones which are part of a skeleton. Add a new keyframe. Go to the next frame. Move the skeleton. Save the keyframe. etc.

Krita will handle the first type of animation really well. For animation with bones you want a program like spriter.

I know of two notable ones, Spine and Spriter. Spine is more professional looking and offers Unity support from the get go. Spriter is a lot cheaper and still offers most of the functionality, so if you're on a budget have a look at it! There's a Unity2D plugin on the forum.

I'd say either use Splines and construct the snake mesh in code (even if it's 2D). OR, use something like spriter and seperate your snake into built up segments, put bones in them and then do the turning animations. I have the same problem as you with being artistically shite without the patience for frame-by-drame but Spriter makes everything easy :)

There is nothing special nor worth mentioning on those animations - well maybe they are a bit sub-par, because some animations reuse bodyparts instead of redrawing the bodies in new positions.

You can do them with any drawing program, any video editing program, and an artist.

The "reuse body parts" part can be made with a skeleton-based animation program like Spriter or Spine. But I recommend using those for "regular gameplay" only. When used in cinematic animations like the ones shown on the trailer; they will look cheap. Also, your artist must be familiarized with skeleton-based animations beforehand, or you will get amateur results.

I've been using Spriter to try and make animations. I'm not an artist but it's been really helpful. You add the limbs / parts of your sprite separately, then add bones and animate based on those.

If your goal is to make a game but you are concerned about animating this, you might want to find a program that let's you animate sprites with bones. Spriter got started with a Kickstarter and there is a free version. http://www.brashmonkey.com/spriter.htm since the model is so big and has clear appendages it would be a good candidate. It's not the 'pure' approach to animating a sprite, but your time would be better invested in some awesome idle and and attack animations for your player character.

I believe what you might be looking for is Spriter or Spine. Both of these allow you to create skeletons and animate them, then assign alternative sprites reusing the same skeleton. I'm not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for, but might head you down a path for a solution.

Yes that's what spine does, you create a skeleton, assign body parts and then animate it. There have been a lot of updates with great features such as inverse kinematics. I've been working with it for a year and i'm very satisfied with it.

As alternatives that i know you have: . Spriter http://www.brashmonkey.com/spriter.htm . Puppet2D http://www.puppet2d.com/

I've used spriter and it does the same but its updates are slower so it feel like it's getting behind in some aspects. But it does the job well if you don't want to animate anything that complicated.

Never used puppet 2d but it seems to be quite reliable from its website.

You can also create skeletons on flash to a certain extent.

May i ask if you want to make those animations for a videogame or an animated series? .

I believe Spriter has a community-made plugin(?) called Spriter2Unity that allows you to take animations and such made in spriter and drag them into Unity to be used. I'm not exactly sure how it works, so I can't say much. It might still be in active development. Spriter Pro is around $60 at the moment, but it was on sale for around $25 for early adopters. There is a free version as well.

Spriter is another option, as is Sprites and Bones if you're familiar with Unity's animation systems.

Spriter is literally on the front page of /r/gamedev right now.

Low memory sucks. Sprite-based, frame by frame animation will chew through your available RAM very quickly, especially at high res. For a coin, this probably isn't an issue but as a general rule, I'd favour either 2D skeleton animations (see Spine, Spriter, etc), or use 3D models.

I get why people still tend to prefer sprites for 2D: you get complete control over how it renders without having to screw around with shaders. It's just a matter of figuring out how much RAM that's going to cost you and deciding if you can afford it.

Jason: "Heya itsaghost! We use 3DS Max for all of our animations in StarCrawlers, but there are a ton of animation solutions out there, including Flash and GraphicsGale, like you mentioned.

There's an up-and-coming 2D animation tool called 'Spriter' that I haven't spent a lot of time with, but looks to be a really sweet-looking animation solution for 2D. http://www.brashmonkey.com/spriter.htm

In addition to the ones mentioned here, there's also Spriter. I've heard some people use Anime Studio, but if you want to do 2D skeletal animation, I'd recommend either Spine of Spriter first (Anime Studio is more geared towards animated videos rather than games).

I would strongly suggest using something like Spriter, or if you are on a budget and would prefer to stay in flash, DragonBones.

Both have Unity importers, although the DragonBones one isn't updated as often.

2D animations? That really depends, there is a way to do rigging in unity, but most 2D game engines rely on sprite sheets. The engine then 'plays' the section of the sprite sheet you want frame by frame to create animation. In the linked sheet follow the images and you can see how, when put together, they create the running animation for the star of Braid. This is honestly the best way to go about doing this, unless you are using unity. In this case you can rig it like a 3D model and create animation the same way you would in a 3D game.

Now, how to create your sprite sheet can be a different story. GMS has a built in Sprite editor, but it's not as feature rich as standalone applications. These can be created in a normal program like photoshop or even MSpaint as well. You are literally just drawing each frame of your animation.

Lastly, there is a hybrid of these two. Programs you can create your sprite, rig it, and then export a sprite sheet for use in engines such as GMS. One I use is called Spriter. Spriter pro can be found on sale every now and then, so I don't recommend paying the full price, unless you need those features immediately. However, the free version has all the basic necessities you absolutely need to animate and export a sprite sheet, Pro simply has a lot of extra QOL features.

Mainly video games. I try to learn how to program but I know it's difficult and takes a long time to master so I'm apprehensive(?) about trying. -Way to quit before you even get started!

Seriously, check out Construct 2. Hands-down the best tool for quickly bringing a concept into reality. It's an EXCELLENT and fun AND easy tool for teaching yourself the basic mechanics. It also has a good, supportive community to help you accomplish whatever you're wanting to do.

Combine Construct 2 with stuff you make/animate with another program called 'Spriter', and you have a legit means to make an ACTUAL game.

My advice: Always be working on your dream game, but spend your time building small, achievable demos. It's an excellent way to learn AND you won't get bogged down/overwhelmed.. plus everything you do will bring you one step closer to your dream game; JUST DON'T START WITH IT.

Oh god, don't make me post screenshots! Plsno.

I'm experienced with gimp and am also considering picking up Spriter to aid with animation.

I had a look at OpenGameArt and there is no arguing that there is some top-notch spritesheets, my problem is that I wont be able to expand upon them when I need more specialized sprites because I lack the skills. I would end up with with an inconsistent mess. But it is definitely good for inspiration, I have a few ideas brewing now. Thanks.

Ill consider posting some atrocities when i get home from work. :)

I've actually asked them first through Twitter but didn't get an answer (I'll try their internal support forms now).

Spriter EULA, which interests me the most (accessible here, btw: http://store.steampowered.com/app/332360/ -> http://store.steampowered.com//eula/332360_eula_0) states nothing in the matter (at least from what I can gather, I'm not really on professional level of reading such documents, and I'm far from being native speaker :) ).
I've also checked out what's said on their site (especially what I found here is interesting http://www.brashmonkey.com/spriter.htm ) - basically the pro package comes with additional assets that can be used royalty free. My understanding is that this software can be used commercialy regardless of the version, as it's not specified otherwise.

This might not be valid argumentation, but both the bundle and this software are advertised in a manner that suggests they're sold specifically for commercial purposes (as one might notice - game development is hardly dominated by charity / freeware developers).

My next planned step was to ask the developers directly, because that's what should simply cut the questions.

If you look at the bottom of their website they have a sample sprite with animations but it's practically camouflaged. Scroll to the very bottom and look at where the contact us link is. Beside that in the same color and font is a download link for the example project file.

http://www.brashmonkey.com/temp/GreyGuy.zip

Loading the example file with the free version is a much better explaination of what Spriter is and what it can do for you then trying to create your first project from scratch using the tutorials, especially if you are a programmer artist or someone else without a lot of strong computer art experience (exactly the kind of people looking for a product like this). BrashMonkey should really consider including it prominently in the free/trial version or even make it the default project opened for a fresh install.

>I'm still searching for a good animation tool, Spine is cool, but overkill for me. I'll probably end up developing some inkscape plugin

Spriter has a free version available to poke at.

Spriter? Spine?

Feel free to re-ask in the daily discussion thread, but perhaps you should explain how yours differs to those.

Para mi, aseprite es de lo mejor. Tiene warp mode para ver como queda algo tileado, grid configurable, soporte para paletas con algunas ya incluidas (db16, db32, gameboy, ...), capas, interfaz de animación, exporta a spritesheets de filas y columnas configurable, procesamiento del lapiz para conseguir pixel perfecto, y creo que hasta le puedes pedir que te haga una pizza.

Además, es open source y puedes compilártelo tú mismo. Si quieres, puedes comprar el ejecutable para Windows con una donación de mínimo $10, aunque obviamente puedes compilarlo para Windows por tu cuenta.

Conozco de oída por un colega Spriter. Por lo que comenta, es muy bueno, sobretodo para animar, pero no puedo decir nada porque no lo he usado. De todas formas, tiene buena pinta también.

Aseprite Web: http://www.aseprite.org

Aseprite Roadmap: http://www.aseprite.org/roadmap/

Spriter Web: http://www.brashmonkey.com/spriter.htm

Not an expert on 2d, but it seems like there's no reason you couldn't use different parts/images in different keyframes. I think most 2d skeletal systems can do this. I almost had to implement support for Spriter's format about 6 months back and I'm certain it can, but I figure others can as well.

Either way your result looks great, and any benefits of implementing the animations using skeletons would probably be minor.

I have been using Spriter lately. It's more of a game development tool than a full-featured animation tool, but depending on what you're doing it might work.

http://www.brashmonkey.com/spriter.htm

Paperdoll - Used by Terraria and Starbound. A spritesheet with all player frames, but only with the item visible: the player itself is invisible. During render, render the player's sprite at frame X, then the item's sprite at frame X on top.

Shading layer - Used with Skullgirls (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SrekORocPY). An additional image layer with flat colors that tells which bits correspond to which body parts, so that they can be recolored more or less at will.

I'd say just go with skeletal animations. A tool like Spriter can help you.