Creating animations and 2D sprites from png files

Unity Engine
1

Hello ! With some friends of mine, we want to create a game which looks like an old mortal combat. For that purpose, we have filmed our characters with a green screen, and have finalized our animation with Adobe Premiere Pro.

How we are managing that now :
We’ve exported our animations like a set of multiple png (which are heavy but necessary for the transparence). Then, we converted them into 2D sprite for finally convert them into an animation, using the Unity animation tool.
The problems with this method (which may be totally wrong, and if it is, please tell me why and then how to do it properly) are that our animations are too heavy. We have something like 10 characters which all have one of a dozen animations and our project file weighs too much.
In our scenes we have two characters (and it works well), but when we add more than 5 or 6 characters (for testing), some lags appears. From an optimization perspective it seems awful for me.

I have three idea :

  • Now, the most accessible idea I have is to reduce the image quality.

  • I’ve also thought about using animated gif, but I understood that they are not recognized by unity for making animation. Or maybe am I wrong ? Because gifs are lightweight files with transparence property.

  • The last idea I have, but it seems pretty unrealistic, is to work frame by frame with photoshop for realizing a sprite sheet. There are too many images, and if there is a way to computerize the cutting, I don’t see how the process may know which transparent/empty portion cut or not : for exemple, if my character takes a step forward, then hits front, and then takes a step backward. How not to cut the empty portion between the initial position and the punch position ? For not having a shift during the animation.
    Principes explained in this video - https://www.codeandweb.com/what-is-a-sprite-sheet - seems nice, but I’m still skeptical about the way to manage my last exemple.
    And by the way what do you think about the software presented in the video ? What are the best references ?

I was wandering should I do what I won’t to do effectively.
Furthermore, I will be happy to receive all sorts of tips, reactions, experiences, or documentation links about all those three idea and about the way we’re actually working.

Sorry I ask too many questions and if I’m annoying, and thank you in advance for any replies !

2

Each sprite asset has a field called “Packing Tag”, which essentially allows you to group your assets into spritesheets. You could, for example, tag all your main character sprites with the “MainChar” packing tag and so on for all other characters sprites “Warrior”, “defender”, and Unity will generate a spritesheet at build time.

It should reduce the draw calls significantly.

3

Thanks !
I will check that. But for the weight of my files, is there something else that I can do ?

(By the way, I just realize that this post was in the wrong section. I move it in the animation section).

4

It is in the correct forum and so far as I can see, It has nothing to do with animation. Once you will make the correct use of Packing Tag, you already should see a much better performance. For the weight of your files, you didnt mention you run it on mobile or desktop. If it’s for mobile phones/tablets then you should of course reduce the size of your characters and all your sprites.

The maximum texture/sprite size for mobile depends of the graphic cards which they use.
1024x1024 - you will not have any problems
2048x2048 - it should be ok for all modern phones/tablet (2014+ if Im not mistaken)-