SpriteMan 3D Support Thread!

SPRITEMAN 3D has just been released!!!

What does it do?

This asset allows you to rig multi-directional sprite characters and use them in 3D games. You can then animate these characters with Animators similar to how you would work with 3D models!

Where do I get it?

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/47367

What about docs?

http://spriteman3d.punksterinc.com/Help

Docs are also in the root folder of the asset. Check out the FREE version!

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/62572

Both usage and our scripting API is fully documented! I don't like clunky, poorly documented 3rd party software the same as every other developer and want users to have to have a great experience using SpriteMan.

What about support?

Send me an email at abardandev@gmail.com.

What about new features?

Email me with feature requests.


Adrian B.

 

Hi all - based on user reviews, I opened up a poll for users that would like access to full source code of SpriteMan. Vote above, and feel free to post other related comments you may have.

 

hi @glowe, thanks for listening to your customer's suggestion. Sorry about the bad review, no bad intent or anything. Hope, I can see more cool features from your system in future. Right now, you can spot my vote right away (the very first vote). Anyway, have a nice day!

 

v1.1.0 is on the Asset Store!

This package includes the following:

- Full source code!
- Added Two Way mode.
- A 16-way sprite manequin model with Idle, Walk and Run states.
- A 'reflect east to west' optimization option.

This version has some special upgrade instructions. They are in the package, and I'll include them here in the forum thread as well.

*******************************
This version is 1.1.0.

This version has some important changes to SpriteMan3D. The most important is the inclusion of full source code. The process of changing from dll to project scripts most likely WILL BREAK SpriteManager assets that you've created. This means this version is not compatible with previous versions of SpriteMan3D and will require the following steps to upgrade:

- Delete the SpriteMan3D folder from your project.
- Import the new SpriteMan3D asset package. (If you upgraded without deleting the existing folder first, please do so now and continue this guide after deleting and reimporting the package.)
- Your managed sprite models will most likely have missing references where the old SpriteManager script used to be. For each affected model or prefab, add the new SpriteManager from the SpriteMan3D\Scripts folder.
- Next, your animations were broken on your managed sprite models. Any animations that referenced SpriteManager.CurrentFrame will now appear yellow and say the property is (Missing!). Remove those properties and add them again. If you can't remove those properties, you can delete the affected Animations and recreate them. (NOTE: DO NOT delete Animators! Animator logic is not affected by the upgrade issues. If you delete animations and recreate them, you will be able to reassign them to your existing Animator States.)

 

I've been working hard in the past few months putting SpriteMan to good use! Check out Grim Dragons: the first game that's powered by SpriteMan3D!

http://www.grimdragons.com/

I never animated anything before making this game and it was a very rewarding learning experience. The most challenging part was creating the actual characters. I basically taught myself how to animate and optimize my workflow.

 

Hey, congrats on your first game! The game art looks cute and unique

 

Thanks, BlueD. That's the kinds of games we had in mind when making SpriteMan. This technique was used in games like Xenogears. And that kind of technique can look even better with modern technology and higher resolution sprites. Though I did find out the hard way that textures end up taking most of the space in a game build. It got a little challenging figuring out how to make the sprite characters look good on mobile, but I think I figured out a good balance.

 

v1.1.0 is LIVE on the Asset Store!

 

Someone asked today if SpriteMan3D supports Normal Maps. The answer is... YES (mostly)...

First a video of SpriteMan3D with working normal maps - it looks really cool:

Here are my findings:
I did some research and found out this great tutorial on setting up sprites on normal maps:

Here are more details:
- You can follow the video tutorial above just fine. The shader they used is a Unity shader, just an older version. So, nowadays, the shader to use would be Legacy Shaders/Transparent/Bumped Diffuse.
- You CANNOT use my 'Reflect East to West' feature with that shader though. (What my script does is set the Flip X boolean in Sprite Renderer component to achieve the reflection. This works fine with regular sprite shader, because it's double sided. But the Bumped Diffuse shader is only single sided. Flipping the sprite turns it away from the camera making it disappear.)
- If you set sprites for all directions and leave 'Reflect East to West' unchecked, it will work just fine.
- If you're using pixel artwork for your sprites, I would recommend using graphics programs like photoshop to generate normal maps or following this guide:
http://antonkudin.tumblr.com/post/110198230014/pixellighting
- If you have existing sprite atlases just follow some guides to create normal maps - it's just a grayscale image where dark is far and light is near. You can probably use free Painter or Gimp to do this if you're happy with it.
- If your atlas is a bunch of individual images and you're using the Packing Tag to pack them into atlases in Unity, I don't really know how to get at the generated atlas textures to generate normal maps from that. Maybe you'd need to create your own atlas the hard way and generate the normal map from that in a program like photoshop.

 

SpriteMan 3D FREE is coming!

I've been wanting to make a free version of SpriteMan 3D for a while. But, what do I put in the free version?! Well, I've figured it out, and it's been submitted to the Unity Asset Store! Here's what it has:
- you can only make 2 and 4-way characters (the full version includes 8 and 16-way)
- you don't get source code (the full version has FULL source code)

 

I recently found a great utility that reduces png files sizes by about 60%!

https://tinypng.com/

I've found that depending on the sprite resolution you're going for, characters with lots of sprites can end up with some really large atlases, becoming a large resource drain for running games.

 

I have two questions:

Does this asset allow you to create sprites from a 3D model? In particular, if I have a 3D model for a character, I'd like to create 8 or 16 sprites showing different rotations. Does this do that?

Second, are these sprites usable in 2D games?

 

SpriteMan doesn't have a feature for creating sprites from 3D objects. Sounds like a good feature though. Currently, your best bet is to find a different product that does that already.

For your second question - it depends. What kind of 2D game do you want to make - can you post a screenshot of something?

With SpriteMan you can make 2D games that use 3D terrains and orthographic cameras. This allows you to use Unity's built in physics. Also, you don't have to worry about z-ordering everything. If a SpriteMan model is behind a 3D crate, there's no fancy z-ordering logic required.

I don't think SpriteMan works for games made only of 2D sprites and tiles though. There are probably more appropriate packages for orthographic 2D side-scrollers. They come with bone based animation systems.

There's probably also better packages for things like 3/4 or top-down 2D tile based games. These will probably handle things like z-ordering mentioned above.

 

When I try to use the Animator for your 8D Knight prefab, I get this error when trying to view the animation, and it doesn't show any of the actual images. When I play test the game it works, but I can't preview the animation while in Mecanim.

State 'Idle' on 'Person 3D Sprite : Managed Sprite : SpriteManager' has '1' frames defined, but the animation is on frame index 2. Please make sure its 'Idle' animation doesn't set CurrentFrame beyond 1, or add more frames to the 'Idle' state.
UnityEngine.Debug:LogError(Object)
SpriteMan3D.SpriteManager:OnWillRenderObject() (at Assets/SpriteMan3D/Scripts/SpriteManager.cs:150)

Is this error something I caused, or is it because of how the asset is designed?

 

With version 2017.1 there is now live preview mode!

 

Hello, glowe! I bought your asset, SpriteMan!

I was very helpful in developing an 8-way character by your asset

So I want to change image, increase the sprite resolution and frame rate, and then modify it.
I want to make an 8-way sprites character with high resolution like your game, Grim Dragon.

Could you tell me How to do and What Kinds of tools you used?

 

Hi @glowe
Does it works also for static sprites like trees for example ?

 

Hi, would Spriteman 3D work for a FPS game like Doom with sprite enemies?

 

Hey @glowe - I noticed that your site is down. Is there any where else I can view the docs for Spriteman 3d?

 

oh boy - sorry guys. I didn't check the support thread for a while.

@KIMSEONHO - Short answer: I hand drew the frames, scanned and colored them in Photoshop. Long answer: I made some simple gray 3d models first in Maya and animated them there so I could get all the exact angles and frames I wanted. Then I hand drew over those.

@zenGarden - Yes, SpriteMan fully supports static stuff like props and trees. With one catch: it just can't be very wide. Since the sprite gets billboarded, really wide stuff will start looking way off.

@derkoi - Yes, SpriteMan can be used normally to make FPS games. The FPS character would just be a regular character that's always in front of the camera.

@HeadClot88 - Yes, the full documentation is available in the root folder of the asset, both FREE and paid versions. I took the SpriteMan site and domain down because it was getting too expensive to maintain as its own domain.

If there's any reluctance about this asset, please try the FREE version first and see if it does what you need. It supports everything except for 8-way and16-way models and full source code access.
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/?_ga=1.28370684.1143038301.1466074198#!/content/62572

For any other questions - please email me at abardandev@gmail.com. I guarantee to answer very quickly there.

 

Yep, personnal mail is usefull if you don't check forums so often lol

 

SpriteMan has been updated to 1.3.0 - this version was built with Unity 5.6. There were no changes to the asset itself.

However, Unity 5.6 finally supports sprite groups! This is very exciting and opens up new possibilities! I'm working on some exciting changes that will allow customizable characters!

I'm also bringing Universal LPC Sprite sheets to Unity with a new asset!
http://gaurav.munjal.us/Universal-LPC-Spritesheet-Character-Generator/

 

New workflow tools are being built! 6 done so far. And, finally, LIVE PREVIEW!

 

Super excited for Live preview

 

I'm really interested in your software. It might allow me to finish my game for a presentation.

I'm using it to build doom monsters in unity. im using doom for the assets, ufps for the fps controls, and ice monster maker for the monster ai.

I'm having some troubles synching your models up to the monster ai code. It should work, however I'm not sure if I set it up correctly. If I give you the asset pack, could you please finish building one monster for me? That way, I can finish the remainder with plenty of time to spare.

Thanks!

Update:

Yeah, we need a full video tutorial on implimentation. I've followed all the steps on your PDF several times, and I can't create new models. Also, when I try to view your existing animations, they don't play in the animator; however in game they work. Very confusing.

 

Hey, I just downloaded the free version to give this asset a go and hopefully get the full version if it meets expectations. It looks like it is exactly what I need. I am playing around with it now but where is the documentation currently located at? The links at the top of this thread are broken.

 

Hi Shipright. I've reposted the help files online to: http://spriteman3d.punksterinc.com/Help

I went ahead and updated the original post with current info.

Docs are in the root folder of the asset. Check out the FREE version first.
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/62572

Let me know if you have any more questions. Feel free to email me for support: abardandev@gmail.com

 

v2017.1 is LIVE on the Asset Store!

What's new in this version?

• Live Preview - you can now see live anim preview in your scene
• Multi-layer sprite management - customize clothes, weapons and accessories with child sprite managers
• 5 new SpriteMan Tools to speed up your SpriteMan workflow
  • Save Sprite Sheet Names
  • Replace Sprite Sheet Names
  • Save SpriteMan State
  • Convert Sprite Sheet to SpriteMan State
  • Load Sprite Man State
• 2 new Batching templates (not in FREE version)
  • Batch process sprite sheet name replacement
  • Batch process SpriteMan State creation

Try it FREE!

Like what you see? Then Upgrade your SpriteMan, man!

 

@glowe

Could you add some option to let us specify the min value lightning for the diffuse shader ?

Actually the sprites are full black when they are not facing the directionnal light, and it doesn't look good as the environment around is still lit.



Also could you add some new shaders with optionnal textures :
- illumination map
- normal map

 

Apologies zen - I did a bit of shader work on the game I'm working on cause I had to. That was enough to understand that I'm not a shader guy. I really won't be providing any custom shaders with SpriteMan.

The spritelit shader that's there in SpriteMan is from the Standard Assets package and when the lighting/shading is used it doesn't look right when X/Y reflection is used on the sprite.

You'll have to look for some better sprite shading packages - there are a few nice ones out there already. Though whether they support the exact kinds of complex effects you'll want is the real question - cause shaders and shader performance is complicated.

 

I thaught it was a specific shadre you was using on your plugin.
So i can change the sprite material and your plugin will still work ?

 

Yes, you can pretty much use any sprite shaders and materials you want. They just have to be for sprites.

 

Sprite man 3D looks awesome! Does it handle viewing angles in 3D? If I view a spriteman3d Sprite from different angles, will the angle change accordingly? (Think Do coop, where you can watch enemies attack other players and you can see them do their work from behind or side angles!)

 

Hey Zebbi - yeah I think so? Scroll to the very bottom of this spriteman landing page.

http://spriteman3d.punksterinc.com/

I think that the section on multiple viewports shows that SpriteMan handles what you're talking about. If not, let me know a little better what you mean.

Also, you should try setting up a sample scene that you're thinking of with the free SpriteMan and see if it works out for you.

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/sprite-management/spriteman-3d-free-62572

 

Thanks so much, it does appear as though SM3D will do exactly as I hope! Can the full version be easily switched out with the free version or would I have to recreate anything I've set up in the full version from scratch?

 

You should be able to swap it out (delete the free version and install the full version).

Though if you want to change the number of directions on SpriteMan component (between, 2way, 4way, 8way, 16way) it will reset the sprites and you'll have to add them again. This was by design and made to keep the memory used at runtime by the component to what it's supposed to be.

 

Hi,

I don't know right terms for techniques used, so I try to demonstrate what I want with pictures from Duke World Tour.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1221117183
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1221117163




First image is what Spriteman does now, second is what I want it to do. So disable rotation on one axis.

 

ok - I'll look into that.

 

having a problem. trying to update to the new version, but when I access it from a browser it asks me to pay again. when i access the storet from my project, I can import the package, but it doesn't seem to be the current version. there is no tool menu, and when I go to the read me and such it states it is still version 1.01.

 

My guess is that may be a browser issue. Are you sure you're logged into the website? And maybe clear browser cache and try again.

Though I'd probably recommend updating assets through Unity directly. Windows > Asset Store > Downloads button (tab). That makes you be logged in anyway when you open Unity and it should work the right way.

On the store page it says current release version is 2017.1.2 (Current upgrade instructions file says 2017.1)

 

yeah, even when I try to download it through the asset store by doing that, and I import the package, it only installs the previous version. it shows that it is going to be the current version, but after you import it the upgrade instructions still state "THIS VERSION IS 1.1.0"

i guess i'll try to un/reinstall unity tomorrow, and see if that helps. i was hoping maybe there was an error when you uploaded the update or something, as I can't understand why it refuses to update.

i'll keep you updated.


update:

so i deleted and reinstalled unity, and i'm having the same problem. theres a F***ton of people who have similar problems with the asset store I guess, but this is screwing me up. are you sure that when you uploaded the update to the asset store that it actually took?

if you were to try and download your own asset, which version is it giving you?

 

Just tried it on a new project and I end up with the latest version. This was using Unity 2017.2.0f3.

After upgrading to 2017.3 it works fine there as well. See attached screenshot.

Try attaching a screenshot of your screen (like mine) maybe. Unless you missed something really obvious, I think only Unity can help debug your issue.

 

heres the screen shot. emailed unity support, will have a response within five days or so.

Update:

hey i figured it out. I used a different email for my Unity account, so because it was on the same computer it allowed me to download the package, but it wouldn't let me update it.

thanks for the help. was an obvious thing. remembered which email I used and have the updated version.

 

Awesome, I'm glad you got it.

 

hey, got it mostly working again. quick question. in the older version of your asset, when you're moving your sprite would be able to turn around a lot more fluently. i've noticed with this version, your character will stop when changing direction. that is like if you are going north, and you do a right turn, you used to keep your momentum while moving, but now it seems that your character will go north, stop, rotate right and then go right. is this something I screwed up in a script, or does this happen now due to rewrite?

 

Version 2017.3.2 coming next week:
- added 32-way sprites
- added new Billboarder component
- fixed rotation/movement for PersonPlayerController

@KiddUniverse - I fixed the rotation thing for the next update that will be public in the next few days.

@needles - I made a new Billboarder component today and it will be available in the next version.

Instructions:
- Turn off the Billboard checkbox on SpriteManager component on your characters.
- Add the new Billboarder component to the same object (Managed Sprite - the one with SpriteManager and SpriteRenderer components on it).
- Uncheck the Billboard V checkbox.

NOTE: rpg man in Clothing Demo scene has been set up with this component - see that for reference. (docs haven't been updated with this feature yet...)

 

Is this a typo? Not sure if anyone would need 32 way sprites. Just me though.

Also just a bit of feedback. Would it be possible to add a slider or similar for customizing how many directional sprites we need?

Just curious.

 

@HeadClot88 - I'd agree with you, and it's not a typo. It was added by customer request.

I think to make it that customizable I'd need to rewrite the whole thing a bit. And it would need to be a separate component altogether at this point so it doesn't break everyone that's already using it this way.

 

Alright makes sense. Thanks for being upfront with me.

Going to shoot you a quick PM about a feature request that I have had in mind for a while now.

 

Got your message. Feel free to email me too: abardandev@gmail.com