Animation Styles: Pre-created sprites or rigging individual sprites?
I've got a few different types of sprites created for a game I just started working on. I created a series of sprites in images for a movement cycle, then I tried slicing that sprite into individual body parts to create the movement cycle using Animation. It seems like using the slicing is simpler for some stationary movements (an idle state, blinking, etc), but having the series of sprite images compiled together looks better when the character runs.
This is a preference question, and I'm really new to Unity so I'm trying to figure out some long term pros and cons to both. I saw a few games only use individually animated limbs on a sprite sheet, while others have the motion animated with a series of images.
What kinds of sprite animations have you used, and what style do you prefer/why?
Answer by SteenPetersen · May 10, 2017 at 10:11 PM
Hi @ashm117 I have worked with both and I must say that my preference is to use multisprite characters. here are some pros and cons:
MultiSprite Characters (chracter cut up into many sprites and animated in unity)
Pros:
Fewer drawings to be made
Animations can be easily transfered to similar characters
Character changes (ie gear pickup) is a great deal easier to update
Positioning of items is easier as well unless you also rig a skeleton for handdrawn characters
ALOT less physically stored sprites that need to come with the game and thus make it larger
Much easier to layer cut animations in mechanim (ie walk, walk+hit,run + hit etc)
Cons
To take full advantage of the above mentioned pros characters must be rather simple in their construction
Not as unique looking
Handdrawn (1 drawing per frame of the animation)
Pros:
Can be very unique, and animations can do many things that are very hard to do convincingly otherwise
Visibly handdrawn and therefore more attractive to some players.
Cons:
Any touchup of art must be done on every single drawing instead of just one. (ie forgot to add a belt! ...draws 10 belts... )
Cannot just test different animations or add some on the fly as the game development progresses (ie: wouldnt it be cool if the characters could, Some_awesome_action? ...draws 10000 belts... )
these are just a few things you can consider between the two.
needless to say I got very sick of using the latter of the two pretty quick,