Best PC program for sprite animation

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Ralf
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Best PC program for sprite animation

Post by Ralf »

Maybe somebody would have some advice...

So I draw my sprites in some graphic editor and would like to see them in motion.

I'd like to be able to create some pattern of animation where some frames of sprite are displayed longer and some shorter, for example

1,1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4,4 and back to 1

So do you have any your favourite PC app to show sprite animation? Free programs preffered ;)
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RMartins
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Re: Best PC program for sprite animation

Post by RMartins »

I don't know any that is Spectrum specific, for animations that has the control of frame length that you need.

SevenUp is a nice editor that allows you add frames, and forward or reverse through them using cursor keys.
This is what I use the most.

You can also use GIMP, which as a filter that allows to use Layers as frames, where you can define the length of time for each frame by adding some text to the end of the layer name like "(40ms)". By the way, a spectrum frame takes 20ms.
You can also use GIMP Export feature to GIF as animation.

If you want a really good animation (but not specific for spectrum), I would suggest that you look for PIxelArt Editors with "Onion Skin" Support.

The Best that I know of and have used before is Graphics Gale (Not Spectrum specific).
https://graphicsgale.com/us/

Or you can check pre-compiled lists like the following:
https://www.slant.co/topics/1547/~pixel ... te-editors
Ralf
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Re: Best PC program for sprite animation

Post by Ralf »

Thanks for these hints. although actually I've heard about all of them before ;) So my question remains open.

From what I realised there aren't tools for sprite animation only. It's usually a graphic editor having some animation feature.

I suppose I could write such a simple utility myself. Only if I had more time ;)
hikoki
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Re: Best PC program for sprite animation

Post by hikoki »

The best one? I dunno.
Maybe the free version of Brashmonkey's Spriter.
RealWorldPaint will do what you asked for. See this video where I played with some Mojon Twins' sprite : https://1drv.ms/v/s!AicsUf2EwOukhCAb8u7g1lG9IdND
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R-Tape
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Re: Best PC program for sprite animation

Post by R-Tape »

Any plans to release a game hik?
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ZXDunny
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Re: Best PC program for sprite animation

Post by ZXDunny »

BASin can do that.
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Dethmunk
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Re: Best PC program for sprite animation

Post by Dethmunk »

Recently I found this ... Piskel... A great online Sprite editor tool. Check it out...
https://www.piskelapp.com/
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yogyog
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Re: Best PC program for sprite animation

Post by yogyog »

I can vouch for Piskel - I've used it a fair bit - not ZX spectrum related, but - https://yogyog.org/pressgang/ - mostly Piskel.
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Joefish
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Re: Best PC program for sprite animation

Post by Joefish »

I have just knocked together a sprite editor to run under ZXDS, so I can take it with me on holiday or use on the train!

I'm forever writing custom editors. On a PC I tend to use an old magazine disk with a full version of Borland Visual C++ on it, as I learned how to programmatically paint arbitrary rectangles on its 'image' object years ago, so just use that with some custom mouse and push-button GUI behaviour. Then write the results out as text assembly data definitions. The tricky bit is re-loading and parsing those definitions back into sprites, but one could use an intermediate binary format.
redballoon
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Re: Best PC program for sprite animation

Post by redballoon »

I use Photoshop on my laptop for pretty much all my pixels (Spectrum and non-Spectrum), including creating animations, though I’m thinking about giving Aseprite a go, though.
When doing full Spectrum stuff I’ll import my graphics into SevenUp and the programmer can use the SEV files if they want.
For on the go, I use Edge Touch on my iPhone. I’ve tried many different pixel art apps but Edge Touch remains my favourite. I can also animate within that, too. I can either export any pixel stuff into my Dropbox or transfer via my PC later.
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Joefish
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Re: Best PC program for sprite animation

Post by Joefish »

I've just realised I can't happily go on holiday now until my ZXDS Sprite Editor can (a) play animations and (b) do 8x2 multicolour... Oh bugger.... :mrgreen:
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Joefish
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Re: Best PC program for sprite animation

Post by Joefish »

Joefish wrote: Wed Jun 05, 2019 3:50 pm I've just realised I can't happily go on holiday now until my ZXDS Sprite Editor can (a) play animations and (b) do 8x2 multicolour... Oh bugger.... :mrgreen:
OK, it can do both of those now. Anyone interested in trying it out themselves? Do your sprite design on the train...
Although you'd manually have to extract the data from a snapshot when you get home, as it doesn't have an export function.
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Bedazzle
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Re: Best PC program for sprite animation

Post by Bedazzle »

Joefish wrote: Fri Jun 21, 2019 11:50 am OK, it can do both of those now. Anyone interested in trying it out themselves?
Is there some version available to public?
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Joefish
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Re: Best PC program for sprite animation

Post by Joefish »

I'll see if I can knock up some instructions and present something before I go on holiday.

The basic version does up to 24x24 pixel sprites with regular attributes, and stores up to 255 of them.
You can now play animations (if they're in order) and also place multiple (animating) sprites on an 'Arrange' workscreen and watch them animate, or see how they line-up to make larger graphics. And it remembers how you placed them for when you switch between the Edit and Arrange screens. Cut+Paste of whole sprites works, but there's no in-sprite-pixel-scroll function. Mainly because I've run out of button-combos to control it!

I guess it would work well under emulation on a desktop if you can map a joypad buttons to extra keys. It's probably not much good on a real Spectrum as it uses multi-button keystrokes. And to extract the sprites you'd want to save them straight out of memory as binaries and probably manipulate the data into your own sprite format.

But it looks good, and I've found I can fairly quickly replicate sprites I've already drawn somewhere else.

The 8x2 multicolour version is a bit more flaky. It only has a crude multicolour renderer to show a single sprite near the top of the screen, so it doesn't have the 'Arrange' mode for multiple sprites. And it's not very stable yet either. And is only set for 48K timing! But apart from that...
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Joefish
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Re: Best PC program for sprite animation

Post by Joefish »

Bedazzle wrote: Sun Jun 23, 2019 8:02 am Is there some version available to public?
See new thread:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1647
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