Hi,
In Chapter 11, a good 2D game example is provided.
Could you please say how the spritesheets were made ? Which editor was used ?
As an exercise, I'd like to make my own spritesheets (or modify those provided).
Thanks !
Kent
Yeah I was able to get a free copy of Poser 5 when I was writing the first book back in 2007 and that is why I was able to use it. Paint.NET is free (allows donations) but to get a 3d character animated you will need a 3d tool. Blender would be a good free option. http://blender.org/
I haven't tried to do any rigging and animation in blender but that would need to be done and then the animation exported in a format that you could extract the images.
The key to any tool is being able to animate something and then render that animation into a format that you can extract the still images and place them into one or more spritesheets.
Hope that helps!
I don't recall the exact steps I took to create these, but I used a copy of Poser 5 I had from years before and created the animation. Then I believe I had to export it as an .avi file. I then found a utility to extract the frames from the avi into individual images. (Or maybe Poser allowed me to generated numbered images - I don't remember.) Finally, I took the individual images and using Paint.NET I copied and pasted them into a large image. I turned on grids to line up the individual images on the larger canvas inside of the paint program.
Hope this helps,
Chad
Thanks for the reply.
Just looked at Poser: $250/$500 for a license. That's kinda out - if I want to try this, then give it to students to try. Would you do this (create Sprite Sheets) any differently today - or if you were on a budget ? Certainly Paint (for free !) fits in someplace. There do seem to be some inexpensive tools - Paint.Net, MilkShape 3D, Allegro - any thoughts on using these (or any other "budget" tools) for Sprite Sheets ?
Thanks very much !
Yes - thanks !
Instead of manually creating your spritesheets you could definitely use this sample code:
http://creators.xna.com/en-US/sample/spritesheet
Make sure to look at all of the samples of the creators club site. They have tons of great stuff!
Nick Gravelyn has also done a great App called Spritesheet Packer found here:
http://spritesheetpacker.codeplex.com/
Obviously the spites thmeselves can be drawn in Paint.NET etc, but packing them into a Sprite Sheet you can use Nicks tool. I even think there is is an API that can be used, when dealing with the Mapping Files it creates.
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Had a quick look - seems very interesting - thanks !
Good idea - thanks !
Your welcome :)