Best sprite animation software for Mac?

[greg886]

Need to start focusing on graphics and develop some good animated sprites.  Any recommendations/leads on what the best Mac animated sprite software is?   I was thinking here of software focused on developing the sprites and animations, so you would be able to edit each sprite as well as play them back at the same time in their animation sequence.

Note - I do have Photoshop CS6.  Unless there is a feature or plugin I’m not aware of, I’m not sure how Photoshop would best the best way here in terms of playing the animation back for your in realtime after you do a graphic adjustment of one of the sprites.

Based on a quick google I see: http://www.aseprite.org/ is mentioned.   I’m interested in commercial as well however, i.e. willing to pay some $$ if it helps get that makes the development easier…

[Hendrix000007]

first I would think of is to actually work in pixelbased tools or bezier (Illustrator) with full potencial to scale up and down for dynamic scaling (you also have filters and effects that produce pixel-looking results) I use Illustrator CS6 because it tends to look sharper and cleaner and more toonish. (Also veeery nice with Wacom tablet) For the production of animations you have to make separate files for each frames or spriteSheets that gets red in as sequences of frames. For this Photo Shop have the animation bar with tweening and auto generate from layers and export as individual frames from layers. But for real animations I have tested both ToonBoom Animte and AnimeStudio and I swear to the latter one (but thats my oppinion) Flash also is a real nice tool for this, its nice to draw with tablet on and ActionScripts lets you customize your own exporting of spriteSheets and separate frames. Corona has good docs on this routines Please ask if there is anything regarding these tools…its been my life since Aldus Freehand and Ground Zero LOL

[greg886]

thanks - re AnimeStudio then mind if I ask:

a) there’s two versions (http://anime.smithmicro.com/comparison.html) for the Debut version the price looks ok, but is this version ok from your perspective to just develop animations for a Corona Game?  Liked the way you can add bones and then move them, and Debut seems to have most of the ‘bone’ features for example.   I see Debut has only 3 motion tracking points, whatever these are…

b) it seems kind of overkill for just developing a set of images for an animation for a Corona game no?  But then if the Debut is adequate then price would be acceptable for me.

c) I’m using texture packer (http://www.codeandweb.com/texturepacker) to create the sprite sheets and export the Corona SDK lua file that you need.  Does AnimeStudio Debut assist here?  If not is there any easy way to export from AnimeStudio Debut version => Texture Packer which can then create final LUA file and sprite sheet for Corona SDK?

thanks

[Hendrix000007]

Im not shure bout Debut version but what I would do is to

make the parts of the character, rig the bone structure and make the character stand on the exactly same place.

(think of the stage size as one frame of your character sprite size, and as the largest dynamic size youre developing for (read up un Rob Miracle´s “ultimate configfile” in here,if you´re not shure of the size of your target device(es)).

Now you make the animations with the num of frames you want in sequences ( jumps, throwing punches, climbing and so on.)

Now you can export the animation as a transp png and as separate images. (I use SpriteHelper so I will refer to that app.),

Import all images and make spriteSheets and animations, physic shapes and assign necessary attributes before you put it all into LevelHelper. Guess this method applies to TexturePacker too

Hope this helps you out.

There are plenty of ways and methods to do this like in Autodesk Maya and with ToonFilter (If you like the toonish style and not the typical 3d look…this is a very powerful feature!!)

[greg886]

re “Now you can export the animation as a transp png and as separate images.”

This is the bit I’m having a probably with.  Just looking at export options on Anime Studio Debut and I can only see export as: QuickTime or Flash.   

Just wonder how you actually export PNG’s out of Anime Studio?  (yes because then I could use texture packer)

[Hendrix000007]

http://anime.smithmicro.com/comparison.html

You´ll need PRO for that feature

[greg886]

ok thanks

[Hendrix000007]

first I would think of is to actually work in pixelbased tools or bezier (Illustrator) with full potencial to scale up and down for dynamic scaling (you also have filters and effects that produce pixel-looking results) I use Illustrator CS6 because it tends to look sharper and cleaner and more toonish. (Also veeery nice with Wacom tablet) For the production of animations you have to make separate files for each frames or spriteSheets that gets red in as sequences of frames. For this Photo Shop have the animation bar with tweening and auto generate from layers and export as individual frames from layers. But for real animations I have tested both ToonBoom Animte and AnimeStudio and I swear to the latter one (but thats my oppinion) Flash also is a real nice tool for this, its nice to draw with tablet on and ActionScripts lets you customize your own exporting of spriteSheets and separate frames. Corona has good docs on this routines Please ask if there is anything regarding these tools…its been my life since Aldus Freehand and Ground Zero LOL

[greg886]

thanks - re AnimeStudio then mind if I ask:

a) there’s two versions (http://anime.smithmicro.com/comparison.html) for the Debut version the price looks ok, but is this version ok from your perspective to just develop animations for a Corona Game?  Liked the way you can add bones and then move them, and Debut seems to have most of the ‘bone’ features for example.   I see Debut has only 3 motion tracking points, whatever these are…

b) it seems kind of overkill for just developing a set of images for an animation for a Corona game no?  But then if the Debut is adequate then price would be acceptable for me.

c) I’m using texture packer (http://www.codeandweb.com/texturepacker) to create the sprite sheets and export the Corona SDK lua file that you need.  Does AnimeStudio Debut assist here?  If not is there any easy way to export from AnimeStudio Debut version => Texture Packer which can then create final LUA file and sprite sheet for Corona SDK?

thanks

[Hendrix000007]

Im not shure bout Debut version but what I would do is to

make the parts of the character, rig the bone structure and make the character stand on the exactly same place.

(think of the stage size as one frame of your character sprite size, and as the largest dynamic size youre developing for (read up un Rob Miracle´s “ultimate configfile” in here,if you´re not shure of the size of your target device(es)).

Now you make the animations with the num of frames you want in sequences ( jumps, throwing punches, climbing and so on.)

Now you can export the animation as a transp png and as separate images. (I use SpriteHelper so I will refer to that app.),

Import all images and make spriteSheets and animations, physic shapes and assign necessary attributes before you put it all into LevelHelper. Guess this method applies to TexturePacker too

Hope this helps you out.

There are plenty of ways and methods to do this like in Autodesk Maya and with ToonFilter (If you like the toonish style and not the typical 3d look…this is a very powerful feature!!)

[greg886]

re “Now you can export the animation as a transp png and as separate images.”

This is the bit I’m having a probably with.  Just looking at export options on Anime Studio Debut and I can only see export as: QuickTime or Flash.   

Just wonder how you actually export PNG’s out of Anime Studio?  (yes because then I could use texture packer)

[Hendrix000007]

http://anime.smithmicro.com/comparison.html

You´ll need PRO for that feature

[greg886]

ok thanks