Making good animated sprites

#1 A friend of mine (the one im making my games with), uses XSI for modeling, and then uses a function to export the frames of the animation, after that, uses photoshop to create a single sheet out of the multiple frames for the original animation...

hope that helps.

#2 Yeah I'd say the easiest method is to "take pictures of 3D models". You can use something like Poser to create animated sprites. There's also Anime Studio, and other tools around. I've seen plenty of games that have done and are doing this for art.

#3 3D Models can definitely be converted to sprites. I'm not much of an artist myself, but 3d models are much easier to work with than just sketching art. Find a 3d program that can take snap shots of 3d animation frames.

Now you may have seen a thread that talked about 3d software that can convert models to sprite.
This particular program I use is called Fragmotion. Its modeler and animator package. Its strong points is animation, but it has tool for converting models to sprites.

Go here if you get a chance:

www.fragmotion.com

#4 I am sorry, I meant to say I am good at making 3d meshes... I have a hard time texturing them.

#5 I have Illustrator & photoshop, and I am not going to use a 3d modelling program. Can anyone help?

#6 I've had some moderate success with loading .3ds models into SpriteForge. It's fairly straightforward to use, gives you control over lighting the model, selecting perspective or othogonal, and can automatically create sprite sheets. The only thing I don't like so far is image resolution-- I've gotten a few blurry models (but this might be my fault, as my texturing skills aren't so great either and may not be fit for the resolution I'm trying to render at).

I've also recently started looking into Blender mixed with Yafray, but I've only dipped my foot into those two programs.

HTH

#7 I said I don't want to use a 3d modelling program, It is not the type of game this is. It is a cartoonish type game.

#8 @ Tyler,

It seems that people is not reading you DONT want 3d... :)

I guess glueIt will do the trick for you:

http://sysimage.250free.com/

It will works to make a sprite sheet from separated images.

#9 Your best bet is to go to some 2d artist community like pixelation, and look for tutorials and advice there.

#10 Ok, I made a testing area:


But I am STILL stuck on making animated sprites.

#11 Okay, that is just awesome! Good on ya.

But if your talking about making sprites of people or animals or beasts or anything like that.

You need to first draw them big on some papers then you would need to redo it on the computer using paint, you would have to pixelate it. It is hard at first but when you do it a lot it gets really easy.

#12 @Tyler

Not to bring the 3D thing up again, but why not mock up a model, animate it, then use the frames as reference to draw your sprites? I've done this to make fluid animations with sprites.

Basically:
1) rough out a model
2) animate it
3) export the poses in required views (side, front, top, etc)
4) load them up into Photoshop as a base layer for each frame of your 2D art. This allows for a decent looking frame-to-frame animation.
5) Then build a cell sheet from each frame that you have drawn. I personally do it by hand within a photo editor, but something like GlueIT as mentioned above will be less tasking.

Another option is to learn old school methods of drawn animation, there are quite a few good tutorials out there, but there will be a bit of a learning curve.

Check out The Agry Animator's tutorials: www.angryanimator.com/word/test/


And if you don't have one already, the single most important tool you can get is a drawing tablet. As mentioned in a recent article on the subject, drawning with a mouse is practically the same a drawing with a brick.

Another article that has lots of good info that was posted around here somewhere recently:
www.gamedev.net/reference/art/features/CoderGameArt/default.asp

#13 I think you can also use Adobe Flash to create an animation then save frame by frame

#14 Tyler, what part of "making sprites" are you stuck on? Drawing them, or getting them into a format that TGB can use?

If drawing is the sticking point, then why not use a 3d modeling app? Using one does not mean that you have to import 3d models directly into your game, nor will your sprites have to look rendered! If you use a "toon" shader or similar, you can get a nice cartoon-looking result that looks nothing like a traditional 3d rendering. If drawing by hand is the part you're stuck on, 3d modeling is a viable alternative regardless of what you want the final look to be. I think this is the point that the "use a 3d app" crowd is trying to make.

If you're stuck on making the cell sheets, just arrange the sprite animation frames in a 2d grid in Photoshop, then use TGB's Image Builder to tell TGB about the grid.

#15 hmm thanks for the links here.,

#16 I hate to bring up the 3D thing again, but you should know that there are shading techniques that makes a 3D model to look like a 2D toon (also called toon shading) like this or this.

Blender is a free 3D program that can make 3D look like 2D if you use the shader right. There are a couple of tutorials to show how to do this.

Tutorial 1
Tutorial 2
Tutorial 3
Tutorial 4 (best)

So if you are skilled in 3D animations you can easily create a series of 2D toonish pictures (png with alpha) to assemble into a sprite sheet in for example Photoshop or Gimp (free)