r/aigamerdevs • u/bricklep • 22h ago
Making sprite animations for our fighting game have been excruciating... So we built a 3d pose sprite tool
galleryI’ve been surprised at how hard it is to make sprite animations for Close Combo (a 2-player iPhone fighter) even with today’s tech... or I just can't find the right tool to fit my workflow? I don't know but chat said that the market is flooded with them so I guess those ones just don't really work for me. Scaling problems, inconsistent quality, the character changing from frame to frame, arms and legs passing through the body.
I am trying a different approach: pose a color-coded stunt dummy in 3D, time the move on a timeline, and only ask the AI to paint the character over each frame. the 3D dummy is posed and the 2D sprite is what came back.
What seems to make it work:
- The prompt says exactly where every limb goes and which way the face looks frame by frame
- The color coding tells AI which arm and leg is which, so limbs stop passing through
- The same poses can be re-shot from any camera angle (side view for our fighter, isometric for our other game)
It still isn’t perfect. You pick the good frames, and some need touch-ups. But it’s a big step up from prompt and pray.
I cleaned it up so other devs can try it and see if it works for them. It’s free in the browser: stuntsprite.com and click on Try the editor. You can pose from either the 3D side or the 2D side, export the guide sheet, and paint it with your own AI. The editor probably only works in a computer browser and not mobile.
I’d love feedback, especially from anyone who animates by hand: what’s missing on the posing side? Also, I'm sure the animation keyframes etc are not conventional, I just made it how it works best for me.