Dee's Forum Posts

  • The clock is ticking...

    27 hours left to grab the tool at the Kickstarter backer price and to jump in for the beta.

    "Skull Plant", ©2013 Kevin Chaloux (kaiseto.deviantart.com) , normal map and dynamic lighting preview of Sprite DLight

  • The final stretch goal (a feature which allows for convenient adjustments to the generated normal maps) has been reached and the project has 6 more days on Kickstarter.

    I am currently re-designing the UI:

  • Thanks a lot, plauk

    Yes it would really be nice to have Construct 2 fully support dynamic lighting.

    In the meantime, you could still go with the new feature of the recently reached stretch goal, which allows you to re-render sprites with the lighting conditions of different environments, based on the generated normal map. This feature will work with batch processing and it transforms the spot light into a directional light, so all subjects on sprite sheets can be consistently rendered:

    "Super Aged Warriors Alpha 2 HD Turbo Special", ©2014 AlbertoV (DYA Games), re-rendered for different environments with the normal map and lighting of Sprite DLight

  • Happy Thanksgiving!

    There is a new feature: an animated dynamic lighting preview for sprite sheets.

    The full update including a video, is available on the kickstarter project page (Update #6)

    "Selen Run Animation", ©2014 Lunar Ray Games, animated dynamic lighting preview of the sprite sheet in Sprite DLight

  • A small update:

    Stretch goal #2 is reached. Sprite DLight will also be available for Mac!

    Here is a screenhot of the first Mac test build:

  • The project finally has four stretch goals:

    • $ 4.000 Lighting preview (already reached)

    • $ 7.000 Mac version

    • $ 9.000 Re-Rendering

    • $11.000 Manual artistic control

    I made another video to introduce all these new features. It is included in the Kickstarter stretch goal update of Sprite DLight (Update #4).

    Thanks to everybody who contributed to these stretch goals with amazing ideas, and thanks to all of you who backed the project.

  • Thank you, GeometriX.

    Your stretch goal proposal is something I will not add as a stretch goal, but my plan is to get in touch with experts for some of the most popular engines and to set up some kind of knowledge base to give users a starting point.

  • A quick update on Sprite DLight:

    The Kickstarter got funded within 17 hours after launch and is now at 170%. Thanks to all of you who backed it or gave me feedback on it, I am still overwhelmed.

    Now I'd like to ask you guys for suggestions regarding stretch goals. Any ideas for additional features are very welcome.

  • Right, the tool does not provide plugins for runtime-calculation of normal maps, it just provides the maps as images, which can then be used in game engines.

    Doing plugins for game engines separately would require me to rewrite the tool for various different engines, in multiple programming languages, which would of course be cool, but this exceeds the scope of the project by far ($2,2k funding goal and estimated delivery date by April 2015).

    Another reason making runtime-generation of normal maps in the quality of Sprite DLight very unlikely is that the shape volume effect is pretty performance-heavy.

    This effect is one of the major things that separate the generated maps from the output of other tools, like CB (you saw the difference in the animations), and dropping that for better performance would make the whole thing kind of pointless.

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  • There you go....

    Normal map for LemonDROP's sprite, created by Sprite DLight:

    Dynamic lighting preview, recorded in the Sprite Lamp shader:

  • Hi everyone, Sprite DLight guy here.

    Pretty exciting to already see that much interest in my tool, even before launch.

    I would like to elaborate a bit on things that have been discussed here.

    First of all, I have to point out that the output of Sprite DLight is (among other assets) a normal map, which can be used in any engine that supports shaders.

    So the question is not if C2 could make use of this, as it already can.

    Engine integration of Sprite DLight's normal maps is the same as for any other normal maps.

    For Construct 2, the developer of Sprite Lamp is already working on a solution, together with some guys of this forum.

    I found a link on the Sprite Lamp website, seems like I cannot post it here... okay, type "sprite lamp construct2" in google search and it should be among the first sites.

    On skeletal animation integration:

    Generating normal maps for body parts or for an atlas in one is absolutely possible.

    In the KS video, there is an example of a character, seen in a Spine-runtime, with dynamic lighting from a shader, written by a friend of mine.

    As the principle is basically the same, this shouldn't be hard to implement for Spriter, too.

    To FraktalZero's question: Sprite DLight's normal maps are in tangent space, which seems to be standard for normal map generators.

    Last but not least, I would like to point out the difference to other normal map generators again, as people keep asking over and over after reading "normal map generator":

    Common normal map generators like CB & co simply cannot create voluminous shapes, they just produce a bevel-like bump effect from a surface.

    LemonDROP has posted a nice example for this, I will upload a normal map made by Sprite DLight for the same artwork and a shader preview later, so everybody can see the difference.

    And then you have tools like Sprite Lamp, that actually can produce great normal maps, depending on the skill of the artist who draws the required 2-5 lighting profiles.

    The downside here is obvious: For larger projects, this means a HUGE amount of work, and you need at least some basic artistic skills to paint nice shading for multiple directions.

    Long story short: Sprite DLight generates a normal map for a sprite or even a sprite sheet by only using this sprite as the input image.

    Load a sprite, press a button, if you want, adjust the result with sliders and options, save the generated map and enjoy.

    You won't have as much control over the result as you have with Sprite Lamp, but the simplification and time saving payoff is beyond compare.

  • I have updated the kickstarter with the new techniques and nicer looking characters (I also changed the original post of this thread).

    The video, the reward tiers and stretch goals have been changed and I am now working on the new toons with exchangeable body parts.

    The changes in short:

    • The source files for Spine will be provided for every toon, containing skeleton and animation data
    • The images for the body parts will be provided and can be mixed to create unique toons
    • Every toon now comes with a custom head generator

    Here's a preview of some female heads created with the custom head generator:

    Thanks again for all the great feedback and helpful tips.

  • Wow, that is a ton of wonderful feedback, thanks so much.

    doesn't matter really if the final file size ends up being 2 Gb.

    Okay, seems like I have to upgrade to a paid dropbox account

    Try to make a spriter version as well or you're severely limiting your target audience

    I can only think of this as a stretch goal with delayed delivery on the spriter files, as it would take a lot of time for me to learn to use spriter professionally.

    Now, that being said, keep in mind I'm not the target audience for your project, since I'm not interested ATM in an undead type game

    I know my samples are too much focused on zombies and the like, although almost half of the 50 planned characters are still open to the backers' needs.

    The sorceress/witch looks a bit too much like a vampire (was that intentional?)

    Yes, I wanted her to be a bit less cute than gnomes are usually depicted, by giving her a twist with those sharp teeth and dark eye sockets.

    Steam can distribute your package, even though you're not a software or a game (that kickstarter you linked to will be on steam)

    I'm going to take a closer look at Greenlight again, I thought you could only provide games and software there. I'm also not sure if they distribute a lot of different small packages of a project separately (but they should, like they do with DLC for games).

    If you ask for suggestion in gamedev forums, you'll probably get more publicity

    I started promoting the project way too late, as I was always afraid of theft of the idea (I know you shouldn't be).

    Selling packages via graphicriver and similar sites is a thing I will look into when everything is published.

    Since you're using spriter/spine, it makes more sense to focus on faces/clothes/armor/decorations. You may be able to reuse the same body for different monsters.

    Exactly this is what I'm planning to do. The body can actually be the same for all toons, as you can customize it in color and proportions anyway when working with the Spine files.

    And this is what allows for mixing and matching of the parts.

    *edit:

    Another question:

    When I provide the skeletons and animations and all the parts and the head customizing feature, everybody can create a unique toon in a few minutes or seconds.

    Does anybody know about legal stuff? How could I prevent people from creating a lot of toons and selling them on graphicriver themselves?

  • So with all that feedback taken into account, my new concept would be this:

    You choose a pirate character, you get a premade toon in form of pre-compiled sprite packs.

    In addition to that, you get the spine skeleton file, including different pirate-themed parts like 3 different hats, an optional hook to replace the hand with and let's say two weapons.

    The spine file with the bones being the same for all characters, contains a lot of animations like different attack animations for all kinds of weapons you can think of.

    On top of that, you get a pirate head generator, which is an additional spine file, allowing you to create a custom head from various different hair styles, eyes, and so on.

    This individual head can then be exported and be used as the head of your character.

    If you want the pirate to hold an axe instead of a sabre, you can get a fantasy character that is made the same way, uses the same skeleton and provides compatible parts, so you can replace the sabre with the axe (and you would have to replace the glow effect sprites, too).

    How do you like that?

    I have been working on a custom head generator for female faces.

    In this video, you can see how the customization opportunities are almost endless.

    youtu.be/a2izozm_C_Q

    He's missing exactly what you're offering

    What exactly do you mean?

    I don't see how resolution is an issue.

    My tests for the sprites of a precompiled epic toon including all stretch goals except of the mounts (lighting layers and normal maps) resulted in a file size of around 50MBs for one character. Of course compressed. But with this new concept, there shouldn't be a huge increase.

  • I know Spriter, I tested both Spriter and Spine, and found Spine a lot better.

    Spine has the option to attach different images to a bone (attachments) and you can also create different sets of attachments (skins) and use them with the same animation.

    Anyway, to use this, the skeletons have to be very similar.