Sprite Sheet?

[Guest]

Decided to try using CS6's Sprite sheet exprter and hoping I am missing something - basically I have an animation of a baseball coming to home plate. The ball is a movie clip that is composed of 11 frames, so that the ball rotates as it moves. However when I export to sprite sheet only the movement of the clip is exported, and not the sub-animation contained in the clip - the rotation. Is this just a FOL and the sprite sheet exporter simply doesn't work? That's what I'm thinking... So anyone know of a sprite sheet export that does work properly? Anyone tried Spriter? I know it's standalone, but it looks promising.

Thanks

[kglad · Accepted solution]

you'll need a spritesheet for your rotating baseball and a spritesheet for the ball moving across home plate. 

or, use a graphic (not movieclip) of the rotating baseball.

[Guest]

Not sure what you mean about needing two sprite sheets - you can't combine sprite sheets - at least not in the engine I'm using (Impact). I've found one tool called SWFSheet that pretty much does what I need, but it has some flaws so was looking for something better. I'd like for Flash's sprite sheet export to just work properly... but that's probably not going to happen anytime soon.

[kglad]

use a graphic (instead of a movieclip) for the nested objects.

[Guest]

Still not sure what you're getting at. If I use a graphic (bitmap?) the ball won't rotate as it moves. I need the rotation animation in the clip that's being animated on its x/y.

[kglad]

no, not a bitmap graphic.  a flash graphic object as in movieclip, button, graphic.  the kind of object most developers never use and frequently used by designers.

[Guest]

>>a flash graphic object as in movieclip, button, graphic.  the kind of object most developers never use and frequently used by designers.

Yeah, I guess most developers don't, since I have no idea what you are talking about. I have no idea how to animate something without a movie clip... feeling dumb about now.

[kglad]

on the timeline of the baseball moving across home plate, click on each keyframe containing the rotating baseball movieclip and select the baseball movieclip on-stage and, in the properties panel, change the object from a movieclip to a graphic.

then create your spritesheet of the baseball moving across home platemovieclip.  preview it to make sure its rotating as it moves.

[asydd]

Is there a good tutorial on using sprite sheets in flash, ie displaying segments of the sheet etc.

Thanks

[kglad]

http://www.leebrimelow.com/new-tutorial-on-sprite-sheets-and-blitting/

[asydd]

Thank you for the information Mr K., yes it is all helpful. Why aren't you given a staff logo... and some remuneration for helping the community and making it viable for Adobe to sell more product ! ?

[kglad]

you're welcome.

(and, staff are adobe employes.  adobe does recognize the contributions of non-staff volunteers like ned murphy and me so we're happy.)

[asydd]

Thanks again for the leads. Have been looking and will need to look a lot more.

I am not familiar yet with packages/classes to the point where I can initiate them in my current process, but perhaps next revision. I'm trying to put together a children's picturebook app, in some of the areas I use bitmaps(png) to depict fancy text items. At the moment I use individual png's to do each items but m looking to use spritesheets.

Last book there were about 25 MB of images, half being page (30 pages) backround jpgs (set for Smoothing and PNG-lossless) as they get scaled depending on the device.

Perhaps at the moment it will be too much work to change everything so the question: Would there be much advantage in changing to spritesheets or is a picturebook a bit heavy to be of much advantage.

[kglad]

no.

there's no decreased file size by using spritesheets.  the main advantage of spritesheets is in rendering speed (and, that's often gained by increasing swf file size).

to decrease swf file size you should consider loading your bitmaps instead of importing them into your library.  that would significantly decrease your swf file size by removing all the bitmaps from your swf.

[asydd]

Thank you for the response and sorry for the delay in reply.

I don't see in this instance how I can load bitmaps as it appears to me to be a package type scenario and the load (file size) is borne by the storefront (Apple/Amazon etc).

Thank you

[kglad]

if you're creating an iOS/android app, file size isn't an issue. 

rendering speed is often an issue and spritesheets would be used to blit animation and increase rendering speed.

[asydd]

Yes, it is for iOS/Android (tablet not phone though some have used it on phones) and AIR-desktop. Thank you for the info.

With all the other info you have pointed me to, I'm keen to make proper use of the package/classes and ont he next run through of the app structure I expect to do it totally different. Thanks Mr K.

[kglad]

you're welcome and, good luck!