Unity Tell us about your experience with Sprite Shape

Ah I see, that makes sense. Thanks for the quick reply!

 

One pretty simple(?) change that I lack very much is to have the control points snapping to the grid in the same way regular points does. I feel this would solve guyunger's as well as my current problems working with sprite shapes.

I feel that both me and guyunger is looking for a more "strict" and less organic look in our levels. I think that kind of use case can be better matched with a few small changes. Think GRIS (the game). <-- A game like that doesn't like chaotic organic shapes but exact organic shapes. Ok maybe both.

Another issue I have currently is that the collider shapes match up a bit weirdly with the sprites even for simple shapes (in version 1.0.14-preview2). I want my sprite to appear underneath/inside the shape line but it always appear in the center. Even when I try to fill out with alpha. Either make it so that I can have half the sprite be alpha or have an offset for the sprite. The current offset is for the collider which makes it end up not fitting the the sprite (sometimes above sometimes below).

Without offset (and a lot of alpha above the painted part of the sprite)


With offset (Another sprite):

 

A feature that would absolutely skyrocket the benefit from spriteshape would be ANGLE-DEPENDANT COLLISION LAYER !

The same way you can specify which sprite is used for angles, you should be able to tell what collision layer you want on its collider.
Right now level design is painful for me because of that.

If anybody has a nice workflow/workaround for making specific ground/wall layers, would love to hear about it !

 

Would be cool If the ends of an open ended platform could be controlled more. Especially since I have an auto updating edge collider whose radius is the height of the platform, and it extends off the edge of the end of the path which is annoying

 

Hello,

I'm using sprite shapes a lot. But I have one big problem. I realized that having many sprite shapes on level throw down FPS to the floor. So I perforce to disable with script shapes that are out of camera view. It is very weird that objects still rendering out of frustum.
Other big problem is when I animating S.Shape. Even if sprite is small when animating goes to 10-15 fps from 60.
I don't know if sprite shapes are intended for animation purposes, but I found it good solution to make new traps and animate them.

Maybe I doing something wrong ?
Please advice. Thank you.

 

Thank you very much for help Venkify.
I will install burst.

 

Hi. We have this exception:

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. Exception: ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null. Parameter name: material
3.  
4. UnityEngine.Rendering.CommandBuffer.DrawRenderer (UnityEngine.Renderer renderer, UnityEngine.Material material, System.Int32 submeshIndex, System.Int32 shaderPass) (at <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0)
5. UnityEngine.Rendering.CommandBuffer.DrawRenderer (UnityEngine.Renderer renderer, UnityEngine.Material material) (at <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0)
6. UnityEngine.U2D.SpriteShapeController.OnGUI () (at <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0)

But we cannot reproduce it ourselves. This is a mistake from our users from their devices.
I understand that for some reason, SpriteShapeRendderer.sharedMaterial is empty.

 

I'm sorry if it's a noob question but how can I fix the gaps between my sprites ? I've been searching for hours !

Is there any way to offset them so they overlap each other ?
As a workaround I tried to change the sprite pivot point to duplicate the whole spriteshape but it doesn't seem to have any effect on the sprites display...
Thanks

 

Thanks, but my sprites are supposed to OVERLAP, not TILE
Here is the result :


I get that sprites must be rendered with a "layer order", so maybe spriteshape just CANT overlap them, still it seems like a big limitation :/

 

Thanks, that could do the trick... well it does require to create a new point per sprite to create the overlap which is not ideal but that could work

 

This. Performance is absolutely abysmal since I updated to Sprite Shape from Ferr2D. Is this something you're aware of and are actively working on fixing? Funnily enough, the performance is way worse when I build the game than when I play it on Game mode within the editor. The FPS is very deceptive, as every SS in the back really lags as I move past them. Here's a couple of performance screenshots - I'd love to know if there's something that can be done to optimize. First screenshot is from within the editor and second one is from a build - where the game gets very slow.

 

Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it. I'm using Unity 2019.3.13f1 - although I have been updating to try to improve performance - so it's carried on between versions. 2D SpriteShape Version 3.0.11 & I added Burst 1.2.3 to see if that improved anything. I'm also not modifying it at runtime - unless normal maps count as such.

I'd be happy to send a "simple repro project" but I've never done that and not sure how exactly to do that. If you could explain, then hopefully we can get to the bottom of this

 

Thank you! I've sent it along - looking forward to hearing back

 

Hello there !
I'm encountering a tedious issue when using spriteshape to level design.
How do you create holes or doors ?

Example :
( don't pay attention at the non tiling nature of the sprite used )

two questions :
1/ If I come to decide there must be a hole in this section, how can create one in this existing spriteshape ? The main level structure is quite big so I can't juste say "let's get rid off half of the right portion and recreate it all again !

2/ Is it even possible to create a "door trigger" and modify this spriteshape at runtime ? If yes how would you go about it ?
This is what I'd like to do ultimately.
I was thinking this might be cool to have a way to bake multiple versions of the spriteshape and just switch between them at runtime

Right now I like spriteshape but I feel like a level design error or change is hard to hanlde, maybe I'm missing something obvious here ^^

[ EDIT ]
Bonus question : I just can't manage to get any corners sprite to show, no matter what settings I try I need to create other points near corners and use sprite variants there which is really not handy
Do you see anything wrong in this settings ?

 

I'm trying to use SpriteShape for the level design in a 2.5D. I want to take the generated mesh and extrude it to make it 3D, but I haven't found any way to get a reference to the mesh. Am I missing something?

The mesh is clearly there, and having access to it would be immensely useful.

 

Is there a shortcut key that lets me snap move a node in x/y axis and also rotate at different step angles(15, 30, 45)?

 

hi everyone
i have two issues with Sprite Shape in it's current form:

1) when using an edge collider with non-zero radius, platform ends end up rounded because of how the collision is generated ( @ETGgames has already brought this up).
this is especially annoying for me since i'm creating a sonic-like platformer with slope detection, which the rounded ends completely mess up. unfortunately, setting the radius to 0 and offset to 1 is not an option since, in my game, i want to make it possible to run on the underside of all platforms, which would not work well with zero width colliders.

2) collision settings are not accessible through code.
edit: NEVER MIND, they are. i've been looking for them under SpriteShapeParameters instead of SpriteShapeController which i somehow didn't see before.
edit2: ok, i get it now: SpriteShapeController is under UnityEngine.U2D and i only had UnityEngine.Experimental.U2D on, which SpriteShapeParameters is under.


Sprite Shapes are amazing additions to Unity, and i would love to see both issues resolved to make them even better.
have a good day everyone

edit: found a solution for the first problem here https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/2d-spriteshape-samples/blob/master/Assets/Unity Technologies/2D SpriteShape/Extras/Scripts/GeometryCollider.cs

 

Thanks for finding this! It seems like the unity devs posted about it on this forum https://forum.unity.com/threads/spriteshape-preview-package.522575/page-6#post-4479055

UPDATE: the script is very buggy...not usable at all in product..ugh....would be good if it were fixed and made more efficient. It even has a debug.log still in there!!!

The FPS drops like mad when using auto update mode.

For example, if bake is called in awake:
IndexOutOfRangeException: Index 65536 is out of range of '65536' Length. ...
GeometryCollider.Bake (UnityEngine.GameObject go, System.Boolean forced) (at Assets/Samples/2D SpriteShape/3.0.11/Sprite Shape Extras/Scripts/GeometryCollider.cs:66)

 

hmmm, haven't really played around with it yet but i do not plan to have auto update on, and the point limit doesn't really bug me either, so i think it'll be fine for me. hope you'll find something that suits your needs.

thank you so much for the tips! i didn't actually realise that this is an official unity script.
i plan to only update the colliders when needed (before entering playmode, after editing a Sprite Shape), since i'm not planning to have any morphing platforms in my game (although now that i think about it, it seems like a pretty cool idea haha).
the collider being detailed is actually good for my project because it should work better with slope detection but we'll see how it impacts the performance.
also really happy to know that you'll keep working on this, feel like this will be a better solution than the currente edge collider with radius approach.

 

two minor things i would also appreciate being added, related to snapping:
1) snapping for handles (those thingies that you drag around to change the curvature), which would make it easier for making exact angles
2) snapping checkbox memory. whenever i exit out of Sprite Shape editing and re-enter, the snapping is always unchecked, forcing me to check the thing again every time. i would love for it to just stay as i left it whenever i exit and re-enter the editing mode.

 

It's not actually because it has too many indices, it's just a weird glitch if doing it too fast on game start in awake. I need to either yield return a few frames or do it later, something I can easily work around, but something you might want to be aware of

 

Thank you. I would like to know if there a way to assign SpriteShapeProfile via C# script? I am making a level load / save feature and can't seem to find a way to do. I also can't find an accessor property / method to get the current loaded profile on a SpriteShapeController. Any way to access?

 

1. Are you using Sprite Shape?
   
   Yes....
   
   
2. If so, how are you using it? What can you tell us about the project you are using it in?
   
   I use it to build up levels. Currently, I use to create environments, both foreground and bg,
   
   
3. Which parts of the tool and asset workflow feel smooth and which parts can be improved?
   
   Working with the nodes could be improoved. With like hotkeys or something. I have a background in art and so when I don't have a hotkey to say, toggle wither it is a corner or smooth node, it frustrates me. I'm spending time I shouldn't have... All work flows should be like playing starcraft at the pro level.
   
   
4. Does the collider generation satisfy your project's needs?
   
   No because, sometimes I want my collider to match art variations not simply be smooth from node to node. So I have to add a bit to it. I also don't use edge colliders in my physics handler... so... yeah
   
   
5. What improvements would you like to see for Sprite Shape collider generation?
   
   Just the ability to use the sprites collider and use it to generate geometry.
   
   
6. Do the Sprite Shape corner workflows satisfy your project's needs?
   
   Not at all. I don't want to have to use corners in many cases. I just want the edge to flow. You can create a smooth node and then it works... (sort of, the normal maps don't properly work with a smooth node). Sometimes, I want a corner without having to have a corner. Imagine I am making flat boulders using sprite shape. I have a fill texture and my edge textures is simply a black line. all I want is to be able to draw a boulder shape and then have it outlined using my line texture and then filled. This simply operation is not that simple... adding corners doesn't make sense.
   
   
7. What improvements would you like to see for making corners in Sprite Shape?
   
   see above. I want more options for creating dynamic shapes from fewer sprites. In the same way you can use on sprite to define all edges of a shape, a single corner sprite that is rotated could be used for all corners... sometimes, projects dont have an up or down, left or right. Constraining the corners to this typical layout is silly
   
   
8. Are you aware of the samples and extras that are embedded with the package? Are they useful?
   
   Resources are always nice. But no, I havn't used them.
   
   
9. What other samples would be useful?
   
   IDK
   
   
10. Overall, what additional functionality would you like to see in the future?
    
    Okay, you have a demo showing hanging vines. They don't really hang very hell because they are being rotated. That makes it look stupid. There needs to be options, such as skew only, etc, in order to allow vertical details to stay vertical while the horizontal details shift, or vice versa.
    
    Scaling the edge along the node would also be useful.
    
    
    
    TLDR. Look at Ferr 2d. Unity has basically put this asset out of use and support, but sprite shape isn't as powerful. Watch the videos where they edit many details quickly and efficiently, in ways that aren't even possible with sprite shape.

 

TLDR : Ferr 2d on the asset store.

It has many features sprite shape should have. The problem is now that sprite shape exists the dev stopped working on fer 2d. So, now I have no choice but to use sprite shape.

 

Also, Changing the order in layer causes weird things to happen with normals maps, if the edge has a normal but the fill doesnt.

Also, if you have two overlapping sprite shapes, the edge of one will render on the top of the fill for the other that sits behind it.

Also, sometimes I want my fill to be rendered ontop of my edge.

 

I think that it would be great to have more options with spriteshape colliders depending on the angle range.
For instance, Walls and Ground always share the same material, tags and colliders where you might want to be able to have different edge colliders for walls and ground.

Also it would be useful to "ignore some angle range for collider generation", like this exemple :
I'd like the collider to ignore the bottom sprites and just be a "basic box" finishing at the edge of the wall.
I suppose I could duplicate the sprite shape, get out of the first one my "background and bottom" sprites and display them on the second without collider but it's a pain to update both of them if you make adjustments to your level design...

 

I understand with coronavirus that things are more difficult for everybody and time has to be allotted differently and I'm sure spriteshape got knocked down a bit on the priority list. I mentioned this 4 months ago, but it's been over 2 years now since spriteshape launched in preview, and there have only been very minor quality of life improvements and slightly improved corners that still aren't usable in most cases. There are still many many features that are needed for it to be a usable tool for anything but very basic platformers and very very low-fidelity graphics. Maybe that's what Unity is targeting and expects people that want more features to be capable enough to make their own tools, which I also understand.

I just don't get how you're able capable of making this tool but incapable of adding features that would make it amazing. Maybe I'm wrong, but to me it seems like the hard part is already done, so it confuses me because you guys are clearly capable, much more capable than me, but it's been over 2 years and nothing.

And my fear now is that now that it's out of preview, you'll be scared of doing the major reworks/updates that it needs because people will now have started using it as is, and now you can't risk doing anything but very minor changes because it'll change too much for the people currently using it. So I have to assume now that it will only barely improve upon its current version.

I truly am sorry for sounding rude, I just had high hopes for spriteshape back in 2017 because I'm incapable of making my own with the features I need and I assume most people need.

 

Recent 4.1 package has some much needed features so thanks for that. I'd add these for my top features to add:

1. Ability to bake collider or only update collider on awake.
2. Fix dirtying of prefabs when you select a spriteshape. I believe this is happening because of update collider. The update code doesn't actually check if anything has changed.
3. Editing shapes is a little funky right now. Seeing points select and deselect at random. Doesn't feel stable.
4. Make snapping work with global snapping option in the toolbar. And make the snapping option persistent
5. Batching support

 

Hi, I checked it and there's no information related to accessing profile

 

Well, visually it works to use empty sprites to "display a hole" but it still leaves you with colliders !
I need to be able to actually modify my level designs one the gameplay end, not only visuals :/



I understand that the points in colliders would need to be the same for left and right parts, enabling the colliders to update into a continuous one but I don't see any way of doing this...

 

Thanks for pointing this out. I was unaware.

 

It is strange and limiting that height is always linear, since these are splines (the height should also be smooth):

 

Sprites imported as Tight meshes don't seem to generate sprite shape geometry any differently, despite the warning:

Which is unfortunate because I thought GeometryCollider.cs would have some better, tighter, information to work with, but it doesn't.


So why does the warning exist?

 

Is it intended that the option to chose between sprite variants only works for the first 3 points? If yes, why?

Edit: Nevermind. This was a bug that occured after updating to 2019.4 LTS version. After changing the number of sprites added to the Sprite Shape Controller, it fixed itself.