Hello, I'm new to Unity and want to know how I should build a "Level" or "Scene"
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I am making a 2D Top-Down Pixel Art game and was wondering wheather using Inkscape to build a level and then exporting that image into unity was a good way of making a background or should I make the background a load of 2d gameObjects? I want sprites that can animate, like a door that I want to open before you leave a room, but can I do that if I use Inkscape? Any help would be appreciated! Thankyou in advance!
btw I don’t know what the backticks do, the window told me to do it ;(
In general, no. Don’t do that.
In the long run, ehh, you’ll never get to this optimization.
Why?
It’s often way faster to build out levels from reusable sprite assets, like trees, rocks, terrain pieces and so on. This lets you reuse and recombine assets. Two scenes can reuse many of the same assets but vary them to feel fresh. This lets you create procedural levels. Or automatically vary tree or terrain colors.
Do you want your plants to eventually sway in the wind? If you bake them into an image then that’s forever going to be out of reach.
Do you want your items to sort properly against character sprites? Each sortable object needs an individual sorting point (eg Sprite Renderer, or Sorting Group). The animatable door won’t work if it’s some combined inkscape image. Export your door as 1+ sprites.
People who are very familiar with image editing software might think, “Yes but it would be faster for me to make this in photoshop/krita/inkscape/whatever.” That might be true in the short run, but you’ll be better served by learning how to efficiently work within the Unity Editor.
An exception to this rule would be if you can splotch together a hand-painted background. Then sortable items that the character could walk behind are in front (using a different Sorting Layer or Sorting Order). More on sorting. This could more render efficiently because you’ll cut down on overdraw (from overlapping transparency) but the real reason to do this is if that’s super fast for you and works with your art style, something hand-painted.
TLDR: use gameobjects.
Thankyou! I want my game to be pixel art so I dont think hand painting it would be a good idea for my particular art style. Is it a good idea to create a spritemap in inkscape and then just swap out the images to make animations? like a walking animation for my character, should I make a couple of images for him walking? Would that work better than using gameobjects in the unity editor?
Also, for things like trees (branching off of what you said), does that mean I should make them in inkscape or in unity? In inkscape they are there as a reusable asset like you said, but how could I give them colliders? In unity it would be a lot easier to make them have collieders and I could just copy and paste a copy of whatever I am making at the time.
Also, should I make multiple of the same sprites just in different colours to add variation and to make it feel “fresh”?
Sorry for all the questions, as i said, I am quite new to unity and development in general.
Thankyou for your help!
Is InkScape a good choice if you want to do pixel art? As far as I’m aware its a vector graphics program, like Adobe Illustrator. For pixel art you’d want to be using something like Aseprite or similar.
Yes, it is a vector programme, my dad has just informed me that krita is a better programme to use because it is pixels, thankyou!
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You should probably consider a dedicated program for it like, as spiney mentioned, Asperite. The right tool can save you tons and tons of time. Krita could work and is free - and Inscape is definitely not what you want - but before you get started try out different tools at least.
Gameobjects can have multiple components attached. Usually sprites in-scene are a gameobject with a Sprite Renderer. This renderer has a slot to put in the sprite asset, which is associated with a texture (png, jpg).
For a collider, you add a collider component, which in 2D is often a Collider2D.
You can do this in Unity through the Sprite Renderer component. It has the ability to tint a sprite. This is good for minor modifications but can’t accomplish, for example, a summer vs winter version of a tree. Big sprite variations require a separate asset (png).
There’s probably a good “Complete Beginner 2D Game” tutorial on YouTube somewhere which, even if you’re just falling asleep to it, would be great to absorb as you get going.
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This is very helpful! I will have to save this for later use, thankyou very much.
Thankyou, I will check this out later!
Sorry, I have some more questions while I am here. Would that be okay to ask here or should I ask somewhere else?
If it’s a different subject, it’s often best to create a new thread because that’ll be found by whomever.
If it’s a continuation of the same subject or a follow-up question, then ask here.
Should i make a spritemap in krita and swap out the jpegs or pngs to make animations?
