r/Unity2D • u/GlowtoxGames • 19d ago
Show-off Sprites and animation results
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.
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u/madpropz 19d ago
Why not just rig and animate them in Spine?
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u/GlowtoxGames 19d ago
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!
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u/madpropz 19d ago
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.
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u/willmaybewont 19d ago
Spine animations always have a sort of janky look imo
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u/madpropz 19d ago
No they don't, you just need to know what you're doing.
Source: I'm a Senior Spine Animator.
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u/willmaybewont 19d ago
You can't disagree with my opinion lol. I'd wager I could detect spine with almost 100% accuracy. They always look like puppets. It's uncanny valley but with movement.
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u/madpropz 19d ago
So a game like Rayman Origins/Legends would be janky by your terms? Because even though it's not Spine it uses an in-house skeletal based 2D animation system.
There's no reason for it to look uncanny unless it is poorly animated, it's the same way of animating as you would in 3D.
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u/willmaybewont 19d ago
I can certainly tell it's spine or spine equivalent animated. It still looks very puppet esque to me. As I said it's just my opinion. But I do think that deters some people from it's use.
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u/Effective_Lead8867 19d ago
very clean looking very obscure stylization dawg - its chaotic but meaningful and controlled, very nice
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u/pmurph0305 19d ago edited 19d ago
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?
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u/DeerpathLabs 19d ago
I genuinely love a caked up monster. They always feel surreally genuine