Spriter Animation for Sample Character Template

[QnQ]

Hello! 

I am an artist new to modding. After running into dead ends years ago creating custom character art, my ultimate aim is to make a clear video tutorial of an easy pipeline to share with the modding community. I am making progress and still figuring out an efficient pipeline, but have run into some issues. 

1. Errors while trying to preview player animation in Spriter for the Sample Character Template SCML . 

My goal is to use Spriter to easily preview WIP custom characters with default player animation, to check if everything is working, sized, and placed correctly, without having to open the game & host a new session just to check any art updates. Fixing this would make adjusting art significantly easier.

The default Sample Character Template SCML file works fine in DST, but contains no animation when opened in Spriter.

Following this Reskinning Mod Guide, I tried using KTools to create a new SCML file with animation. While the new SCML contains working animation in Spriter, the project has completely broken proportions: 

For the SCML file, I tried

• The Sample Character Template's two atlas files, build, and anim: The premade SCML works perfectly in DST, but no animations load into Spriter. Running the files through KTools results in the broken example above WITHOUT animation in Spriter.
• The Sample Character Template's two atlas files and build, and default player idle anim from DST data: Running the files through KTools results in the broken example above WITH animation in Spriter.

Does anyone know why this happens/ how to build an animated character template SCML properly??

2. Alternatively, is there a way to add existing animations (anim) to existing Spriter projects?

Adding player animations to the original working Sample Character Spriter project would solve the issue just as well!

3. Alternatively, is there an existing method to easily place/align/resize sprite images? 

Is there an existing method for making sure sprite art, especially faces, are aligned correctly? Currently I am drawing over the Sample Character Art Atlas and replacing the files manually, but features end up too high/low/small/large/off center & need manual adjustment.

I'm working on a fast way to do this, but I wanted to check here if anyone has already figured this one out? 

Thank you!

Edited November 1, 2020 by QnQ
Adjusted Question

[Yakuzashi]

Ad 1

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The Sample Character Template's two atlas files, build, and anim: The premade SCML works perfectly in DST, but no animations load into Spriter. Running the files through KTools results in the broken example above WITHOUT animation in Spriter.

In this case you can't change default dimensions of .png inside of "exported" folder. You should also check if:

- format is correct (only .png),
- your .png names are correct,
- folder names are correct.

Ad 2

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2. Alternatively, is there a way to add existing animations (anim) to existing Spriter projects?

Adding player animations to the original working Sample Character Spriter project would solve the issue just as well!

I have combined wilson.zip and player_idles.zip from:

Quote

...Steam\steamapps\common\Don't Starve Together\data\anim

output.rar

 

Basically, you can take any build.bin and atlas-0.tex from one .zip and anim.bin from another .zip (inside of anim folder). Bear in mind that it might not work properly, if those 2 parts aren't meant to be connected.

 

Edit:

output2.rar

This is example of bad compiled animation (it's based on my OC's artwork). I have merged atlas-0.tex + atlas-1.tex + build.bin from my mod and anim.bin from player_idles.zip. In this case character is resized and messy as hell.

But why?
Comparing arm_lower-0.png from wilson.zip and mymod.zip you can see that wilson's is 24x52x24 and mine is 50x50x24.
In the Spriter it looks bad, so my bet is that all the animations are tailored for Wilson.

And I was wrong because in game everything is fine.

I don't know what I am writing now...

Edit 2:

Well, I think that Spriter is not 100% accurate in represenation of in-game view, so this is insurmountable obstacle. Unless DST Devs won't show us, we can only guess.

 

I wanted to help and I have failed once more...Sorry.

Edited November 2, 2020 by Yakuzashi

[pickleplayer]

On 10/31/2020 at 7:52 PM, QnQ said:

The default Sample Character Template SCML file works fine in DST, but contains no animation when opened in Spriter

Last I checked, the spriter file does contain a preview "animation" to show what your assets will look like in-game, and it's called "BUILD_PLAYER". It's not any of the actual in-game animations, but a replica of the 3 different idle poses. Unless they removed it in a recent update or something, it should still be there.

But if you're looking specifically for actual in-game animations, I think we're out of luck. The sprite sizes used in esctemplate are resized, and so trying to paste them over exported DST player animations will probably look distorted in spriter (as you mentioned above) And I don't know if there's any easy solution to that.

 

 

[PanAzej]

Hi, I know the answer to this issue.

So basically, you use Ktools - krane isn't very good at decompiling textures so that you get proper original sizes.

What you see is a "broken" character build in Spriter, but the actual coordinates in SCML are *mostly* accurate.

How to fix this?

Well, just overwrite all decompiled symbols with the original symbols of the Esctemplate character.

Simply copy-paste the folders and it should all be good.

Edited November 3, 2020 by PanAzej