In progress: Polly animation

I've been trying out Spriter Pro, while following the Udemy course SPRITER 2D Humanoid Character Rigging & Animation for Unity by Billy McDaniel. In the course there is a lot of attention for setting up the character bodyparts in Photoshop and rigging it in Unity. However I don't use that software, instead I use Inkscape and Gamemaker Studio 2. Also, to have the program be really helpful you need to buy the Pro version (which I did) for just a few extra's. I did by a package deal where I will also get Spriter 2 ... eventually ... when it comes out. They've been talking about Spriter 2 since 2018, so when it will come is not really clear. I was able to download an Alpha version, but I haven't tried it yet.

The industry standard for 2D animation is Spine, but that's quite expensive (at least for me as a hobbyist). It's 99 dollar (currently 69 dollar) for the Essentials version and 449 dollar (currently 379 dollar) for the professional version.

Spriter is much cheaper at 59.99 dollar. It's quite user friendly, but it doesn't have that much features. There is an unfinished/experimental mesh editing feature in Spriter. I haven't tried it out yet, but I read that it was buggy. With mesh editting, you can have hair and clothing flow in the wind or with movement. Straight from your 2D drawing.

Then there is Dragon Bones. This software comes at a whopping 0 dollars. Yes, completely free and it includes mesh editting. It's supossed to be a bit less user friendly or intuative as Spriter, but I might play around with it a bit (again ... I already have it installed, so I probably used it many years ago). I do think Dragon Bones is no longer actively supported.

Back to Polly. I tried to do some animations based on the course. I did an idle animation, a punch- and kick animation and then I went off-course and made a hurt- and walking animation. None of them are very good! Partly because I did not follow the course and partly because I did not use the course material. The character in the course has an upper- and lower arm, hand, upper- and lower leg and a foot. Polly has an arm with included claw, a leg and a foot. Having less body parts to work with, means less bones and less movement. So I have to look into that.

See below the results of a few hours work.

Idle

Walk

Kick

Hit

Hurt

Comments

Sirens - the next step

In the last few days, I made a ton of progress. I'm still working on the same screen, the artist profiles, but I've added a bunch of new features, like getting the profile data loading smoothly from the JSON arrays. All in all, I'm probably only at about 1 or 2 percent of what I ultimately want to make, but I'm really happy with how it's shaping up. Of course, it wouldn't be indie dev life without a setback. Over the weekend (Sunday), I completely screwed up and lost a massive chunk of progress. By the end of the day, I was almost back to where I was on Saturday. Almost. The silver lining? Forced to redo it, I completely restructured how the data handles the modular character profiles. That refactoring actually makes it way cleaner and easier to build out the game further down the line. Then, yesterday and today, I knocked out some smaller additions that somehow feel huge now that the foundation is solid. Check out the video below to see how it's looking ...

AI is killing creativity!

I'm currently experimenting with AI, using Gemini and ChatGPT to create images as inspiration for new characters. For a game idea that I have in my head, which is a long way from any shape or form, so I won't get further into that yet. I fed Gemini and ChatGPT some of my earlier characters (actually my only set of characters that I published thusfar): the Cleopatra-zombie character set . And I'm using that to create better looking characters. So I might come out with a Cleopatra v2 set in the near future. Cleopatra Here's the first version of Cleoptra, dressed in white (part of a jump-animation) and the version AI made from it (with a spaceship background - which gives a hint about what kind of game I want to make), as well as a face portrait. The full-body image was created by ChatGPT. The headshot was created by Gemini, as you can see by the 'sparkle icon' watermark in the lower right corner. Gold Cleopatra I also made another 'skin' for Cleopatra, w...

Sirens Devlog: New UI, Character Makeover, Band Stats, and More!

Hey everyone! Welcome back to another update on Sirens. It’s been a busy development cycle, and I’m excited to share what I’ve been working on behind the scenes since the last update. Check out the progress in the video below: Here is a rundown of the latest additions and improvements: In-Game News Feature I’ve kicked off development on a brand-new news feed feature. This will be used to keep players immersed in the game world, reacting to the band's rising popularity, world events, and industry gossip. It's still in its early stages, but it's going to add a lot of life to the game loop! New Character Art Style The characters got a fresh visual overhaul! I’ve transitioned to a brand-new art style. It gives the band a sharper, more polished look that better fits the vibe of the game. Let me know what you think of the new look! New Management Dashboard Managing your band just got a whole lot easier. I've implemented a brand-new dashboard that tracks all the essential metr...

MaxxHoorn

Search This Blog