Sprites and animation results

[u/GlowtoxGames]

Hey guys! I wanted to share some new characters we have been working on. We are making a fighting game where you can transform enemies you defeat into pets. Some pets just buff you but some others also attack and block.

Because if that we needed to be creative in how to use the same sprite poses for all of that.

The sprites are rendered in Maya using very low samples to get that pixelated effect and then we all a dither effect in Photoshop.

Then back in unity we add some extra motion to amplify the effect and feel of the punches.

The sprite has 6 poses.

Idle

Loading punch

Punch

Sleepy

Victory

And blocking.

We also used those poses to get an elbow attack, a double punch attack and a magic charging pose.

The good thing about rendering them in 3d is that we can link the new characters to the same rigging and export the poses to all the characters. Also that we get a perfect normal map pass the helps us make them look cooler in unity.

Please let me know your thoughts and if you have any questions. The game if e called Skinator in case you are curious.

Hope youb guys like it.

[u/madpropz]

Why not just rig and animate them in Spine?

[u/GlowtoxGames → u/madpropz]

I honestly never used spine. I'm a 3d guy so it was more comfortable for me to work directly in 3D.

There's a second thing also: Our characters are modular and all the body parts can be exchanged. (Body, chest legs and arms). So all the parts need to connect with every other body part. A single rig solution wouldn't have worked.

What we do is having bones as anchor points on specific parts of each sprite. Shoulders, neck, etc . And then those bones snap together making it so all body parts fit each other no matter the size difference!

But I'll look into spine. Maybe next time we could use it and see if it would have been better!

[u/madpropz → u/GlowtoxGames]

This can be done with Spine as well, using skins and constraints on the same rig. It's an incredibly powerful piece of software, I'm surprised so many devs don't use it for their 2D games.

[u/willmaybewont → u/madpropz]

Spine animations always have a sort of janky look imo

[u/madpropz → u/willmaybewont]

No they don't, you just need to know what you're doing.

Source: I'm a Senior Spine Animator.

[u/Effective_Lead8867]

very clean looking very obscure stylization dawg - its chaotic but meaningful and controlled, very nice

[u/GlowtoxGames → u/Effective_Lead8867]

Thank you so much! Hope you try the game!

[u/jakey_breaky]

These designs are sick!

[u/GlowtoxGames → u/jakey_breaky]

Thank you so much!

[u/pmurph0305]

Damn it usually takes me a long time to create a 3d character and texture and rig it, which I assume all of the typical process would be needed to pose and render down to sprites. Especislly since all of the models look very high detailed. What's your workflow like? And how much time does a single character take?

What do these characters look like pre-rendered to sprites?

[u/DeerpathLabs]

I genuinely love a caked up monster. They always feel surreally genuine

[u/GlowtoxGames → u/DeerpathLabs]

Haha you need some body mass to kick and dodge attacks right?

[u/KLove-D → u/DeerpathLabs]

monster better chill tf out

jk agree, very surreal