How to store and prepare 2D sprites (3 directions) for later use

Unity Engine
1

Hello,

I have a couple of sprites for a 2d character, containing the following categories:

  • body
  • head
  • hair
  • shirt
  • jacket

Each version of an “item” has one sprite for three different directions (up, side, down).

What I am currently trying to do is creating a way to store these sprites with a name, so that I can just set the hair to “Curly” or “Long”, so the sprites for all three directions need to be stored under this name. Unfortunately I don’t have any idea how to start. Anyone has some tips or at least keywords that will help me get started?

2

By up down and side i assume you mean character movement? Or are you talking about a character creator type thing?

3

I mean the orientation of the sprites. So I have for example hair shown from the side, shown from behind and shown from the front.

4

Here is an example:

Character should use this when walking upwards:
3228977--247771--upload_2017-9-21_23-10-29.png

This when walking sideways:
3228977--247772--upload_2017-9-21_23-11-21.png

And this when walking downwards:
3228977--247773--upload_2017-9-21_23-11-44.png

I have a script that takes care of this. The only thing the script needs to know is “Okay the character has curly hair, so I have to use this sprite now because the character walks sideways.”. And because I plan to have a ton of different hair styles it should be easy to maintain and expand at any time.

5

Hmm, theres many ways you can go about swapping out the hair (im guessing its a seperate sprite on the main character?),

anyways, if you already have the button promps like if up hairstyle = up
then you can do something like this to control and add new hairstyles when you please

public class CharacterFeatureControl : MonoBehaviour
{

    [System.Serializable]
    public class HairStyles
    {
        public string styleName;
        public Sprite top;
        public Sprite down;
        public Sprite side;
    }

    public HairStyles[] hairStyles; // create an array of hairstyles

    public int currentHairStyle = 0
        ; // change this for the hair style you want from the hairStyle array e.g 0 = curly 1 = afro
    // Use this for initialization

    void Start()
    {
        // assign the new sprites in here like
        topHairSprite = hairStyles[currentHairStyle].top;
        downHairStyle = hairStyles[currentHairStyle].down;
        sideHairStyle = hairStyles[currentHairStyle].side;

    }
}

Screenshot - a5cd8d96d0ace0760f33e766b3e2759b - Gyazo - this is what it will look like in the inspector, if you get my idea you can just increase the hairstyle up or down by 1 to change it

1 Like
6

That should work just fine :slight_smile: I am currently implementing it since a couple of things need to be adjusted in my scripts. Thank you very much for the idea!