One annoyance I’ve found with a traditional sprite swapping workflow is the need to animate everything twice.
Once in my drawing app, then again in Unity. By that I mean I have to export/import the unique sprites, then re-setup the swaps and transformations all over again. An Idle animation may go 1,2,3 pause 3,2,1.
Are there any animation tools that support exporting both sprites and clips to unity?
Hello!
Which software are you currently using to create your art in?
How would your dream pipeline look like?
and to answer your question, the first DCC tool that springs to mind is Aseprite, where you can use this importer to import .ase files directly into Unity, which gives you both the Sprites and Animation Clips. I haven’t used it myself, so I am not sure how the reliable the importer is.
At the moment, Clip Studio Paint for animation. I export to PSD, which strips the animation data and leaves the unique frames, then I cleanup in Photoshop and reconstruct into animations clips again in Unity. Sometimes I also work entirely in Photoshop.
Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll def give it a shot.
Thanks for the insight into your current workflow. If you could dictate a “perfect” workflow, would that be to stay in Clip Studio Paint for both art and animation creation and export the result into Unity where it generates both Sprites and Animation Clips, or do you envision any other setup?
CSP breaks its animation timelines up into 3 major components. Layers, like photoshop. Clips, a layer placed somewhere on a timeline. Lastly, keyframes, which define transformations and camera movement.
So for instance, a timeline for a crouch > jump > crouch animation might have layers assigned to cells as such: 1, 2, 3, delay, 2, 1. Same as sprite swaps on a Unity clip. Then it may have a keyframe where the sprite is grounded, a keyframe where the sprite is in the air, and a keyframe where it is grounded again, same as animating a Unity Transform.
At its most basic, it would be great to have an export plugin, or a Unity *.csp importer, that would generate a sprite for each layer and an animation clip for each timeline, using cells as sprite swaps in Unity Clips. In a perfect world it would also have an option to use CSP keyframes to create transform animations in those clips as well.
Im not familiar with Unity’s clout and reach, but from a small dev perspective I have thought about a plugin, but I hit a wall with all resources on CSP development being entirely Japanese.
A casual alternative that might work better for Unity right now, given their new PSD importer, would be support for Photoshop timelines, which have many of the same core features.
Thanks for the explanation and suggestions! Those are interesting ideas to look into. I’ll add this conversation to our list of feedback on the 2D toolsets.