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Art workflow question

Discussion in 'Community Learning & Teaching' started by Slayer5150, Feb 25, 2009.

  1. Slayer5150

    Slayer5150

    Joined:
    Jan 30, 2009
    Posts:
    119
    Hi all,

    I have a simple question regarding sprite artwork. I am creating a 2D game for the iPhone and have a question regarding the art for the sprites (texture in this case).

    First off what is the best way to store the frames for an animated sprite? I assume this is called a sprite sheet, and it consists of a texture that contains all frames for one or more sprites stored in a strip or row/colmns, for example:

    AAAAAA
    BBBB

    Might be a single image with two sprites, A and B. My questions:

    1) This image should be a power of 2 in both width and hight, but does it mean each individual frame must be a power of 2? For example, can frame 1 for A be 10x10 and frame 2 be 12x10, etc so long as the image width they are in is padded to a power of 2?

    2) What app do you guys use to create the sprite sheet?

    3) What is your typical workflow to get the art into the engine?

    4) Is there a performance gain by packing all the sprites into 1 texture like this?

    5) Anyone have a utility that creates sprite sheets for a font?

    Thanks!
     
  2. Eric5h5

    Eric5h5

    Volunteer Moderator Moderator

    Joined:
    Jul 19, 2006
    Posts:
    32,401
    1.) Yes, frames can be any size.

    2.) Photoshop.

    3.) Save the file into your Unity project folder, where it auto-updates.

    4.) Yes.

    5.) I think there's one on the wiki.

    --Eric
     
  3. Slayer5150

    Slayer5150

    Joined:
    Jan 30, 2009
    Posts:
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    Thanks Eric.

    What format do you save them in? I use PSP (Paint Shop Pro), it saves as PSD but I assume using PNG or TGA might be better since I don't use Photoshop. Currently I don't use my mac to produce content (mainly because I already own PC versions of everything).
     
  4. Eric5h5

    Eric5h5

    Volunteer Moderator Moderator

    Joined:
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    I save in PSD; that way you can keep all the layers, which makes everything far more convenient. It would be worth looking into getting Mac licenses for whatever you can; many companies offer cross-grades, and doing everything in one environment (particularly the OS X environment, I find) is faster, especially with Unity's pipeline.

    --Eric
     
  5. Slayer5150

    Slayer5150

    Joined:
    Jan 30, 2009
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    I would, but the problem is right now my PC is very fast and new, my Mac is just the slowest iMac and the performance doesnt come close to my PC.

    This is primarily because I am a PC developer by trade and work at home often. Soon though, I will have a much faster Mac and then will move my art work creation over to the Mac.

    The last time I developed on a Mac was in 1999 when I worked at Adobe (I worked on code used in both Photoshop and Illustrator). Hmm... I should hit my old Adobe colleagues up and try to get CS4 free :D
     
  6. HiggyB

    HiggyB

    Unity Product Evangelist

    Joined:
    Dec 8, 2006
    Posts:
    6,183
    Waddup from another former Adobe employee! Although my stay was brief and in the wake of the Macromedia acquisition (Dec. '05 to Sept. '06). :p :)

    Eric seems to have you sorted on your questions though so carry on!
     
  7. Slayer5150

    Slayer5150

    Joined:
    Jan 30, 2009
    Posts:
    119
    You too eh? :)

    I worked for them in the Minnesota office, Doug Olsen (who now has a Microsoft office there) was our manager.

    When Doug left Adobe in 99, I did some consulting for him an Jeff Michaud (who now works at Apple).

    Adobe was a great place, but then they cancelled all our projects when they purchased Golive. When Doug and Jeff left, I left too. I could have went to CA and worked on Premier, but I turned it down.

    I ended up at JASC a few years later :D I was very sad the day Corel purchased JASC and drove it into the ground.

    PS: You guys have an excellent engine, great community and awesome support! Keep it up :)
     
  8. Eric5h5

    Eric5h5

    Volunteer Moderator Moderator

    Joined:
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    I just put SaveFontTexture on the wiki, so you can click on the auto-generated bitmap that Unity makes from TrueType fonts, and save it as a PNG. Not sure if that's what you were after, but this is something I remember people asking if it could be done in the past, and anyway I needed it. ;) Of course, it wasn't until after I was done that I found podperson's font mapper, which is better in many ways (although OS X-only--considering Unity 2.5 here; irrelevant to me personally--and doesn't seem to do uppercase-only), but hey, it was a short script and didn't take much time to write....

    --Eric
     
  9. Slayer5150

    Slayer5150

    Joined:
    Jan 30, 2009
    Posts:
    119
    Thanks for the help Eric!