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DeadmanDines

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11th July, 2005 at 10:23:56 -

I'm just thinking of a quick and simple app to help design sprites, and wondered if a few sprite artists would give their opinions. Would this kind of application make your jobs simpler?

The idea is called Animation Masker. It's designed to help create and animate the outline of your sprite.

You build your shape (eg: the player's body) out of lots of smaller bitmaps and shapes, all of the same colour (you may have one shape for each muscle or pronounced bone (such as cheeks, chin, etc)). You can use separate colours to define separate shapes if you wish (eg: skin-colour for torso, blue for jeans, red for arms, etc).

You move the little body parts for each frame, then render. For example, if you want a guy flexing his muscles, you may want to rotate the forearm and move the 'bicep' shape upwards (making it appear to grow).

When you render, the program simply scans the image and outlines the edges for you. The result is a simple, low-detail image with all the outlines done. You can then paste it into paint and add the details such as eyes, etc.

I may not have explained this very well, so I might see if I can do a manual example in paint or get a little beta working.

Does anyone understand what I'm getting at? I know it'll be handy for me at any rate.

 
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-Vinny-



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11th July, 2005 at 11:39:25 -

hmm, are you trying to make a cel animation editor? that would be pretty neat to play around with

i don't exactly see what you are asking for other than if we understood your post, and i think i understood it somewhat

 
Vinny

Rei Ayanami



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27th July, 2005 at 06:30:53 -

Well, maybe it would be quite nice. But i cant see how it will help me as a sprite-artist. But, good luck!

 
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DeadmanDines

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2nd August, 2005 at 06:57:03 -

It basically lets you create heaving, bending, morphing outlines. These can then be exported and have the details added in other software.

I'm thinking of also adding the ability to insert standard images and keyframe them. That way you can use the shape morphing thing to design the basic shape (for example, a body or head) and import other images to keyframe them (eg: eyebrows, eyes, etc).

The keyframing would let you alter X and Y position, opacity, angle, the image currently loaded, x and y dimensions, etc.

It then plays the animation and records each frame as an image that you can then import into MMF.

 
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Peblo

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2nd August, 2005 at 11:20:15 -

Then everyones outlines would look the same!

 
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DeadmanDines

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2nd August, 2005 at 14:21:53 -

No they wouldn't.

 
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Peblo

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2nd August, 2005 at 14:31:23 -

Well....so what!

 
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Matt Boothman

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2nd August, 2005 at 14:42:27 -

So, for example, you could make a walking animation with this? With constant sizes for arms, legs, etc? That would be amazing if you could do it. What about size (of the whole thing)? Could you make little Snes-ish sprites or would they have to be bigger? And what about hair? Could you have hair as a seperate object and have it wave about if you so wished?

And what about shading? Or is that going a bit too far?

 
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2nd August, 2005 at 16:00:01 -

even without shading, a program that keeps limbs consistent during animation would be amazing, so yeah, that would help the spriting community alot. especially here at the daily click

 
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DeadmanDines

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2nd August, 2005 at 16:35:48 -

Yeah, walking animations could be done with this very easily. So long as you have separate pictures for each limb part (eg: lower leg, thigh), you can define hot spots and rotate and keyframe them as much as you like. The outline system will blend them if you so wish, but I would probably just insert them as normal sprites and keyframe them.

I'm still trying to think of how it would work in the case of smaller sprites cos zooming in MMF is difficult.

With hair it depends on the effect you wanted. On a small scale it would probably be easier to do that kind of animation in paint. Outliner would certainly be useful for long hair though, or pony tails.

Shading could be trickier, heh! I was thinking about that earlier, wondering if there'd be a way to blend that in.

 
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Peblo

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2nd August, 2005 at 16:42:00 -

What about loose clothing, like capes, robes, and super baggy pants? If it could do that too it would be really cool!

 
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2nd August, 2005 at 18:01:30 -

yea dines, even if you dont get shading in it. definately make this.

 
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RapidFlash

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2nd August, 2005 at 22:24:40 -

Palette-swapping would also be a nice feature to add(and since it seems like you're making in MMF, this should be easy).

 
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DeadmanDines

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3rd August, 2005 at 09:31:25 -

Yeah, cloaks and robes are a classic example of the shape thing.

I'll do some tests and see if I can build a little GIF that may show its abilities a bit better.

 
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Muffin Batel [neonair games]



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3rd August, 2005 at 22:05:54 -

sounds neato, i wouldn't mind playin around with it

 
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akim



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5th August, 2005 at 06:48:13 -

Hehe... just had an idiotik idea... What if u could create a little movie with it too? stupid isnt it?

 
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