The Mugen Fighters Guild

M.U.G.E.N Central => Sprite Projects => Topic started by: H Mr. Ton! on March 09, 2015, 05:09:27 pm

Title: Sprite Sheets for individual Limbs Project
Post by: H Mr. Ton! on March 09, 2015, 05:09:27 pm

I realize this idea might tank, but I think it's worth a shot anyway.

The central idea of this project is to collect as many sprite sheets as possible for individual limbs.

For example, take Ryu.  Now cut up his sprites and make 1 sprite sheet for each of the following: head, torso, single arm (reverse to get other arm), single leg (reverse to get other leg).  Now do that with a bunch of characters slowly over time, sort of like color separating except limb separating... which would actually accomplish color separating at the same time.   

If people slowly build up a sort of 'library' of limbs on this thread, heads, torsos, weapons, gear, capes / flowing cloth, etc, then assembling just about any character under the sun would be relatively easy, at least compared to hand spriting an entire thing.  All you would have to do is download the sprite sheet for each body part, set the colors how you want them, and put them together in photo shop or gimp to get your finished sprites.

The major bonus here is that in one shot it opens up the possibility of spriting to just about anyone.  Or at least to a much wider audience than a handful of talented artists.  In doing so it also makes a very wide variety of characters possible, because people would no longer have to rely as much on existing sprite sheets.  Not to mention that as the collection grew, more and more would eventually be possible with it.  Then of course the down side is the initial investment.  Just consider tho that a single sheet could have many many uses in this instance...

So that's the idea.  Any contributions at all are more than welcome, and if this actually gains any momentum I'll start cataloging the sheets in the top post.  Here's a list of suggested sprite sheet categories, which could eventually become the catalog if this takes.

Head, Hair
Torso, Upper Torso, Lower Torso
Single Arm, Upper Arm, Lower Arm
Single Leg, Upper Leg, Lower Leg

Cloth (Capes, Dresses, Scarfs etc...)
Gear (Armor, Weapons, Helmets etc...)
Artillery (Guns, Machinery, Vehicles etc...)
Creatures (Random creatures as helpers, intro material etc... Dogs, cats, zombies etc...)

Here's an example of Drex using this approach with his CVS Rogue W.I.P. (http://mugenguild.com/forum/boardseen./topics/cvs-styled-rogue-160648.msg2090350.html#quickreplybox)
(http://i.imgur.com/h321uJs.gif)(http://i.imgur.com/5YuDwLq.gif)(http://i.imgur.com/boLMMH6.gif)
(http://i.imgur.com/GIaCSEv.png)

Title: Re: Sprite Sheets for individual Limbs Project
Post by: lui on March 09, 2015, 05:56:11 pm

this actually seems like a good idea, i'll try to contribute when i have time :D

Title: Re: Sprite Sheets for individual Limbs Project
Post by: H Mr. Ton! on March 10, 2015, 12:57:49 am

Glad you think so.  I really hope this catches on.  I could see a lot of cool stuff coming out of it, especially in the long run. 

Title: Re: Sprite Sheets for individual Limbs Project
Post by: Demitri on March 10, 2015, 03:14:39 am

I love the idea. There could be more original characters done or speedup the process on making new moves for chars.

Title: Re: Sprite Sheets for individual Limbs Project
Post by: FeLo_Llop on March 10, 2015, 05:59:08 pm

It's awesome seeing I had a good idea two years ago. I can't find the topic "By pieces" here, but I found it at Sinhra, so it may be helpful to people here too:

Quote

Basically, this is a method that if well developed, could help us, spriters to work more quicly on stuff. The BIG ammount of work comes in the very begining, since it's spriting each part 360º, different spins, etc. And that for every part of the body. Where's the good part? Once you finish this, you just have to draw stickmen and paste what you need over it. As in result, you will have a full body sprite(you just have to fix connection parts, such as upper-lower arm/leg, etc, or filling empty spaces). So, stuff will look more consistent and uniform... at the same time stuff gets faster and faster!!

Well...Copy&Pasting from the Guild...



So, I've recently started a topic on the Request Board about The RUmbleFish' sprites,  but has no asks. No dramma on this :P

Well, the thing is, those pieces were used for making some full bodies. Even Namco did it in Namco x Capcom:
http://spriters-resource.com/psx_ps2/nxc/sheet/20422

Looking at some SFZ, KoF, etc sheets, I noticed that, most of teams uses at least, a similar technique(not the same, tho), I even used this "some" parts for Viper(and Rose!), and some spriters too.

Then, I thought that coding by parts would be VERY tedious, but; what if pasting parts are done from MSPaint/Photoshop/etc?

So, I made a sketch:

Spoiler, click to toggle visibilty

(http://i48.tinypic.com/256saw7.jpg)

As you can see, it's an incomplete thing: just some torsos in different poses, upper legs, arms, etc. FULL body in the front, back and side. Now imagine that those parts could be pasted above a stickman. And you, spriter, just have to make different stickmen for a movement. Pasting those parts et voilà, you're saving time.

So, my question is...is this feasible in Mugen?

PROS:
- Sprites will have a similar look to each other in the sheet.
- Saving time to the spriters. They "just" do each part and fill the empty spaces in the final "frankensprite"
- MORE original characters could be done using this technique.

CONS:
- If you can't draw a single line, forget it :/. Knowing to draw is pretty important here.
- Spriter NEEDS to look SO carefully while pasting, sinze empty spaces could make the final product a bit unconsistent.


So, basically is that. Excuse my TERRIBLE English. Have a nice day!



An image is more than 1000 words:

(http://i45.tinypic.com/2njeyyh.png)

The image that the coder will work with is the final one, similar to the one which's after Nina's screenshot.

Anyway, I'm starting this bunch for making an actual tutorial.

Thanks for your time!!




OK, now some new: Upper arms(270º movement) with shoulders(in two directions) and forearms are finished. My objective was to draw a generic woman, but it became Nina Williams, xD! I'll post it later.

Have a nice day!


EDIT: (http://i45.tinypic.com/nr0y9l.png)



Well...frontal torso 360º is done.

- Sketch:
(http://i49.tinypic.com/14npmdk.png)
- Basically, this is how I did every part...pinkm fill with flesh colour, second light, and then the last lighter colours:
(http://i46.tinypic.com/98y34m.png)
- Here are the bunch of torsos. Don't feel this as "porn", please:
(http://i46.tinypic.com/nntpi0.png)
- And...just for the Hell of it. It turns and turns!!
(http://i46.tinypic.com/sbh6ir.gif)

Also: Side upper legs are done 360º too. Now it's time to a mid-revolve, back and frontal. Then I'll go with missing arms, lower legs, knees, heads, feet and hands.

Just WOW!!

Have a nice day!!

Title: Re: Sprite Sheets for individual Limbs Project
Post by: AlexSin on March 10, 2015, 06:12:15 pm

^
http://mugenguild.com/forum/topics/its-made-of-pieces-145751.0.html

Title: Re: Sprite Sheets for individual Limbs Project
Post by: FeLo_Llop on March 10, 2015, 06:14:19 pm

Love U, Alex :-* !!

Title: Re: Sprite Sheets for individual Limbs Project
Post by: Bastard Mami on March 10, 2015, 07:23:21 pm

I was also doing some research on that, but stumbled on the pixel shaders as well as some math.

the math being this:

we assume the body pieces will be rotated, if we assume something like 45 degrees that means that to rotate a piece fully on one axis we need 8 sprites. that's just a simple way, but in 3d space we got 3 axis, so if we want to have a somehow different view of the piece we need to rotate in the remaining 2 axis, assuming 45 degrees again that means  8x more drawing per axis sow e end up with a need for 64 different sprites for 2 axis, 512 sprite in total for all 3 axis.

but we can ignore the positions that we are unlikely to use , to have less, like, if we are doing a fighter, the full from top and full from bottom views are unnecesary, most likely views close to those ones will be unecesary too.

organizing the sprites might be a bigger problem, we can put all the sprite in a row the x axis as we rotate them on the z axis (something like this, imagine the bar is an arm | / - \ | / - \ ) then in the lower row rotate them a bit on the Y or X axis and put all the z rotations again.

wondering if this needs rmoe image examples, though that would be more time consuming.

Title: Re: Sprite Sheets for individual Limbs Project
Post by: H Mr. Ton! on March 11, 2015, 03:56:20 pm

FeLo_Llop said, March 10, 2015, 05:59:08 pm

It's awesome seeing I had a good idea two years ago. I can't find the topic "By pieces" here, but I found it at Sinhra, so it may be helpful to people here too:

That's really cool that you tried to start something like this already.  I'm sure the idea's passed through a lot of peoples minds around here, I know I've been ruminating on it a couple years myself.  We are however suggesting two slightly different approaches here that have a very similar result, and when combined hopefully this could really take off.

Basically what your suggesting is a spriting technique, which is brilliant.  You just draw each body part at a different point in rotation around the Y axis, and that's it.  You could take any one of those, use the rotate function in photoshop/gimp and get that piece to just about any angle you want.  Foreshorten with the scaling/perspective tool from there if you want, and you're golden.  You have just about any angle imaginable. I've never made an entire sprite sheet, but I can imagine how much easier that would make the process.

When you add in what I'm suggesting, taking existing sprite sheets and breaking them down into individual limb pieces (head, lower arm, upper torso etc...) we are then coming at the project from both sides.  You would have people breaking down existing characters into this type of sprite sheet, and also spriters making new character sprite sheets with your technique.  The two approaches would combine perfectly. 

The upside to what I'm suggesting is that it could be started right away and done by just about anyone with no artistic skills whatsoever.  It taps the entire existing wealth of sprites.  The upside to what you're suggesting is that creating a character from scratch suddenly takes Much less effort and you can also use existing body parts that have already been sprited.  Again, the two combine perfectly.   
 

Title: Re: Sprite Sheets for individual Limbs Project
Post by: H Mr. Ton! on March 11, 2015, 04:02:45 pm

Double posting because for some reason I can not edit my post.  Is anyone else unable to edit their posts in this thread?

@Bastard Mami: Yea organizing the sprite sheets might take a little forethought.  There are really good examples in FeLo's thread that Alex linked to, but yea grouping them according to body part and in order of angle of rotation around the Y axis seems like a really good place to start.

Title: Re: Sprite Sheets for individual Limbs Project
Post by: Enso on March 18, 2015, 09:48:08 am

That sounds like an interesting idea to put separate limbs. I like it. I think that's going to be helpful, but the problem is that you have to start from scratch if you sprite directly on MSPaint with a PC. It's a tough work to sprite limbs but it will end up to be easier for pasting body parts around after the results. I'd like to see the limb sprite sheets happening. Good idea to contribute for users/spriters/developers to work on it.

Title: Re: Sprite Sheets for individual Limbs Project
Post by: NiO ErZeBeTh on March 19, 2015, 07:41:28 am

you could use some "nude" characters like Neo Dio or Neo Geegus and other guys and make full sprite sheets for naked arms, upper body, lower body, legs and maybe face

it's a cool idea

Title: Re: Sprite Sheets for individual Limbs Project
Post by: Zer0Mojo on March 19, 2015, 07:47:04 am

Yes, Yes this needs to be done! This is a great idea!