Is this a viable way of animation?

Games
#1

I thought I could make a stick man out of vectors ( newRect() ), and animate them in to a running animation.

With this animation made I could put images over the top, or replace vector shapes with images. This would use less space than using sprite sheets, but probably would not look as good.

Is this stupid? [import]uid: 79135 topic_id: 16039 reply_id: 316039[/import]

#2

Stupid? No. Cryptic? Yes, to say the least. Do you expect people to understand what you are asking based on this very very limited description? [import]uid: 70134 topic_id: 16039 reply_id: 59544[/import]

#3

…just read my own comment and yes, it makes no sense. oh dear.

[import]uid: 79135 topic_id: 16039 reply_id: 59546[/import]

#4

Actually, that’s a very good and oft-used technique.

Two tips:

  1. go for images straight away.
  2. set everything up so you have child-images to parent images (the shin is a child to the thigh, the thigh is a parent to the rump). [import]uid: 70134 topic_id: 16039 reply_id: 59549[/import]
#5

And… if you want dynamic image resolution, you may want to consider using newImageRect, rather than newRect. [import]uid: 67217 topic_id: 16039 reply_id: 59556[/import]

#6

I am aware :slight_smile:

Just realised how long this is going to take.
[import]uid: 79135 topic_id: 16039 reply_id: 59557[/import]

#7

What you could also do is create a body out of physics objects, and link them together with joints.

Of course, either way you approach this, the animation of the characters will be pretty difficult, compared to using a more traditional method, like spritesheet animation. [import]uid: 49447 topic_id: 16039 reply_id: 59590[/import]

#8

Check out spriteloq. With it you can animate the way you describe using Flash and then export for use in Corona. You could potentially have hundreds of animations from a single set of body parts. [import]uid: 9422 topic_id: 16039 reply_id: 59601[/import]

#9

I’d also recommend Anime Studio Pro (previously known as Moho) which does an amazing job with creating animations from bone-structured characters. They can be either vector, or even raster. [import]uid: 49447 topic_id: 16039 reply_id: 59603[/import]

#10

I didn’t want to use sprite sheets because of the size of them [import]uid: 79135 topic_id: 16039 reply_id: 59748[/import]

#11

The process you are describing would certainly decrease the overall filesize. It’s a popular method for online 2d games with lots of different animations.

However, for a mobile app that gets downloaded once and run locally, it seems that spritesheets would have a distinct advantage, in that it would run faster since the CPU is doing a lot less work. [import]uid: 49447 topic_id: 16039 reply_id: 59750[/import]

#12

In my case, I use all kinds, including sprite sheets, transitions and enterFrame methods.

I found some animations are better done using sprite sheets. For example, I have spinning images that continue spinning throughout a game session. They appear as part of the game environment – and when I used an image that rotates at runtime instead of sprite sheet doing the spinning, it ended up causing the app to slow down a lot (on older device), and as soon as I changed these objects to sprite sheet based animation, it eliminated the slow down issue. So, it may still be worth trying out sprite sheet as an option.

Edit: @producerism has just made the exact same point above with much less words and with more technically clear explanation. Cheers. [import]uid: 67217 topic_id: 16039 reply_id: 59751[/import]