Frame by Frame

Discuss issues pertaining to the Creature Animation Editor here.
Pixel Mush
Posts: 31
Joined: Sat Jul 29, 2017 3:58 pm

Frame by Frame

Post by Pixel Mush » Sat Jul 29, 2017 7:49 pm

Hi there I just recently purchased Creature Pro (yesterday), and it seems to have some fantastic features. But for the life of me I can't figure out how to do frame by frame animation. (I am coming from spriter pro). Some of my animations I would rather draw frame by frame, I have an atlas with every frame loaded into the program. But I only want one image in at a time. Its an animation of a bomb getting ready to explode. The inside of the bomb starts glowing red from the center out. The outside of the image doesn't change except for the fuse burning. How do I accomplish this? Any help or pointing me in the right direction would be awesome.

Pixel Mush
Posts: 31
Joined: Sat Jul 29, 2017 3:58 pm

Re: Frame by Frame

Post by Pixel Mush » Sat Jul 29, 2017 7:53 pm

Also just some extra info. I don't use photoshop or illustrator (I won't pay for subscription services). I use affinity designer and affinity photo (which are actually better programs in my opinion). I see i can import json files into creature at to start a project. And Affinity supports direct uploads into Spine (animation program) which I don't use. Would the photoshop uploader work for my affinity files?

chong
Posts: 1178
Joined: Thu Feb 19, 2015 2:21 am

Re: Frame by Frame

Post by chong » Sat Jul 29, 2017 8:24 pm

Hello,

Thank you for your questions, I will try to answer them for you.
For frame by frame animation, you can try Sprite Swapping ( if you have an exploding bomb or flames):
http://www.kestrelmoon.com/creaturedocs ... nager.html

Video tutorial(s):
http://youtu.be/Neet8Gz9Lsg

https://youtu.be/lQypClg2nNQ

I recommend that with Creature Pro, you first sculpt a rectangular block mesh that can fit most images of your bomb explosion.
Then you use the Sprite Frame Manager to swap in frames into it.

I recommend you download the Ice Demon Sample here:
https://www.kestrelmoon.com/creaturesam ... eaProj.zip

In it, you will see the mesh regions for sprite swapping are authored as large rectangular block meshes. In fact, you can draw some dummy white rectangle placeholders to represent your swapped sprite frames and put them into your rig.

In animation mode, you will then use the Sprite Frame Manager, import your actual bomb explosion frames and swap them in.

Sorry, we do not support affinity files just yet but maybe in the future. However, does Affinity support PSD export? Because I am browsing through their website and they say they do support PSD. In this case, you can probably just author your character art in Affinity layers and export out into PSD. Using PSD, you can import directly into Creature.

(From their feature set: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/design ... ture-list/ They do support PSD export. So export your art assets out from Affinity into PSD and import directly into Creature )

Cheers

Pixel Mush
Posts: 31
Joined: Sat Jul 29, 2017 3:58 pm

Re: Frame by Frame

Post by Pixel Mush » Sat Jul 29, 2017 10:21 pm

I appreciate the quick response! I did try exporting as a psd and when I went to import it in and click create. It did nothing. I clicked it ten times to no avail. I'm actually at work currently when I get home I'll mess with the settings and try again.

chong
Posts: 1178
Joined: Thu Feb 19, 2015 2:21 am

Re: Frame by Frame

Post by chong » Sat Jul 29, 2017 10:59 pm

Hello,

I just tested the PSD importer in Creature and it worked for a couple of sample PSDs.
So the PSD should be:

- Character body parts broken up into different Layers, flat hierarchy
- Canvas size captures the body parts

If you are having issues, you can upload your sample PSD onto dropbox, then send me a PM to the link. I can take a look at the PSD when I get the cycles.

You mentioned that you could not click create. I assume you did this at the start screen? If you did, did you also specify your starting Project directory? You need to specify both the PSD and also the new Project Folder.

Thanks

Pixel Mush
Posts: 31
Joined: Sat Jul 29, 2017 3:58 pm

Re: Frame by Frame

Post by Pixel Mush » Sun Jul 30, 2017 12:14 am

I did specify folder and psd. Tried a few times. I will certainly send some examples, screenshots, or links as soon as I am able to.

chong
Posts: 1178
Joined: Thu Feb 19, 2015 2:21 am

Re: Frame by Frame

Post by chong » Sun Jul 30, 2017 1:16 am

Hello,

So the PSD import pipeline is one of the most widely used features for Creature ( lots of studios run it on a regular basis to import their PSD authored characters into Creature since it's a huge timesaver ). However, they are mostly authoring their PSDs from Photoshop, I wonder if the PSD generated from Affinity could be different.

When you said you clicked and it did nothing, what do you mean exactly by that? Was there a crash? Was the window still responsive? Did any sort of hourglass/spinning wheel show up indicating the system was busy processing?

In any case, can you PM me a dropbox/cloud link to your PSD document. I will take a look.

Thanks

Pixel Mush
Posts: 31
Joined: Sat Jul 29, 2017 3:58 pm

Re: Frame by Frame

Post by Pixel Mush » Sun Jul 30, 2017 6:12 am

Image

When I click create absolutely nothing happens. System doesn't freeze, crash, show loading, absolutely nothing. It just as is. I linked a screenshot. I waited 5 minutes just incase it was loading but literally nothing happens. I believe I am setting up the PSD correctly.

Here is a snip of my export menu;

Image

My choices for PSD are; "preserve accuracy" (which is what is default), "preserve editability", "final cut pro x".
Resample choices are; "Bilinear" (default), "bicubic", "lanczos 3 seperable", "lanczos 3 unseperable".
Area choices; "whole document", "selection with background", "selection without background" (what i used)

I will pm you a link to the PSD file.

chong
Posts: 1178
Joined: Thu Feb 19, 2015 2:21 am

Re: Frame by Frame

Post by chong » Sun Jul 30, 2017 6:36 am

Hello,

Thank you for your submission. Indeed this is a very strange sample, it does nothing as you described. After I did some debugging, I found out that the reader could not recognize the layer information which Affinity exported as for PSD. However, when I added an extra dummy transparent layer into your psd and saved it out from Gimp, Creature could import the psd correctly.

Do you mind on your side trying to add an extra layer ( right now your PSD only has 1 layer ) into it and see what happens? I have attached back your test with one extra dummy layer added in. Please check your PM and give it a go. The modified PSD file I am sending back to you in the PM loads for me.

I am not sure yet if this is an issue with the Affinity exported PSD or the reader itself. This is the first time I have encountered a PSD import error like what you showed me; then again almost all the users importing in PSD are using Photoshop or Gimp.

If this is a PSD file format encoding issue, I suggest for now you export from Affinity, then use Gimp to open up the PSD and export out again. More investigation will be required but as of right now, I can tell you that PSD import works from the following programs for Creature: Photoshop, Gimp, Pixelmator. This sounds like a work around and I apologise for that; however PSD is a closed format so we all have to reverse engineer around it to make the loading code work. It's not a trivial task in itself but yes, more investigation will be required.

Update: I think it might have something to do with the layer encoding for Affinity's export. I exported out from Gimp with 1 layer and it worked.

Thanks

Pixel Mush
Posts: 31
Joined: Sat Jul 29, 2017 3:58 pm

Re: Frame by Frame

Post by Pixel Mush » Sun Jul 30, 2017 7:09 am

Image

If you look at my program it actually has multiple layers. (6 layers to be exact) That's weird that it only shows one for you in the psd (even in gimp) when i reload the psd back into Affinity it still gives me all six. So I'm not quite sure how to add a dummy layer, beyond what I have added. I did add another layer though (a seventh) that holds no info just an empty layer with the same result. I will try changing the type of psd it exports and see if that helps the result.

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