creating/exporting 2D sprites/sprite sheets???

[mixedup]

Would love some advice/tips/links to tutorials on how to use Anime Studio Debut to create 2D sprites (/sprite sheets) for use in 2D game development (e.g. Corona SDK). Had a quick search/find through the manual and nothing jumped out. Some sub-questions might be:

* can ASD (Anime Studio Debut) export a set of animations to sprite sheets?
* is there a way to automatically get ASD to export images for a particular animation (e.g. player jumping) out to a set of PNG files such that they are evenly space timewised for animation, and all the same size etc
* how do have to set the ASD "canvas" to the size of your sprite sheet and work in this? Does ASD have a way to automatically export to a given sprite image size & then it works out the best way to fit your animation into this and then export?
* are there limitation on what features in ASD you can use for what I'm looking at here - I read somewhere you can't use bones - however I'm not sure why this would be the case
* is in fact ASD the right tool for what I'm doing - I downloaded it to have a look trying to find something that let's you edit the actual graphics whilst your seeing the animation in progress
* any other pointers/links etc welcome

thanks

[neeters_guy]

AS doesn't natively export to sprite sheets. You export your images as pngs and assemble them using various softwares. There are actually quite a few spritesheet makers out there (such a tool is even included in Gamemaker). Some useful ones I've found:

1) A Gimp plug-in called Sprite-Sheet SpriteSheet.scm
Import the pngs as layers and run the script.

2) Imagemagick is a commandline graphics converter tool. A typical command would be:
montage *.png -tile 4x4 -geometry 128x128+0+0 -background none image.png
This will create a sprite sheet named "image.png" from 16 pngs measuring 128-px-by-128-px, preserving alpha.

3) Finally, there is a fantastic little program called glueit

There's no reason why you couldn't use AS to make sprites (unless you want pixel art, which is a different animal altogether). I've been doing this myself recently:

[mixedup]

Thanks. How did you identify the points at which to export an image in the animation? Like ever X seconds, or manually

In fact does AS have an animation play mode where it does smoothly show the movement in between the export points? If you know what I mean. Ie

[maxie-online]

For a walk sprite, a jump sprite etc. I would export just the images of the frames with start - changes - end positions and run them through TexturePacker for best possible optimization.
http://www.codeandweb.com/what-is-a-sprite-sheet

[mixedup]

thanks - Actually the problem I'm having now is exporting. Just looking at export options on Anime Studio Debut and I can only see export as: QuickTime or Flash.

How did you actually in AS carry out "export just the images of the frames with start - changes - end positions" can I ask? Once I can work out how to do this I'd then be right importing them into Texture Packer.

Hopefully the issues isn't that I've got the "Debut" version of Anime Studio. (i.e. as the non-Debut version costs quite a bit more)

[maxie-online]

[...] Just looking at export options on Anime Studio Debut and I can only see export as: QuickTime or Flash. [...]
Hopefully the issues isn't that I've got the "Debut" version of Anime Studio. (i.e. as the non-Debut version costs quite a bit more)

My export options in ASP:


Sorry for answering only now. I thought I had subscribed to this thread, but got no notification of your reply. (Seems I did not.)