This might seem like a simple question, but I can’t find a clear and exact answer. I want to do more than just bring in my sprite sheets/artwork into Unity. I know there are tutorials on that and I DO know how to import and break up sprites, ect… I know about changing pixels per unit and resolution of the sheets. My question is actually about the best protocol and practice, of which there doesn’t seem to be an abundantly clear answer.
If anyone wants to link a good tutorial resources that details the following, or can just flat out answer my question, I feel that I can move on with my project and not look back:
If I have hand-drawn sheets of character sprites, enemy sprites, nature/terrain pieces and misc. sprites, how should I break the sheets up exactly, and what size? I am having a little trouble understanding if everything should be on one giant sheet. The art is as big as possible and I will be working with a 1024 dimension - maybe even shrinking down to 512. If I have different sheets of one character, is there a better way to make sure everything is the same size?
Should everything be the same? If I went with 512 sprites, for example, is it a bad thing to go with a 1024 background? Or vice versa.
What exactly is happening when I have a sheet with 512 resolution and I change the pixels from 100 to 30? I know the sprite gets larger, but I’m trying to make sure I don’t use this in the wrong ways.
Basically, any overall advice or if someone can give me their workflow(of how they bring in their sheets/background art), I think that would help. I went to a game dev meet-up and tried to ask a few of the artists there, but they seemed very resistant to share their secrets. My artist is an architect and very skilled at things like CAD and photoshop, but does not know the finer intricacies of Unity. For me, I have never truly tried to optimize a 2D project before and I want to do things the right way. Maybe the way I’m asking my question is the wrong way of asking, so I think if a few came here and told me about how they brought in their sheets, how they broke them up, and how they used the sheets over levels, it would help me a ton.
1-You should be worry about your target devices max texture support size. If you’re making a game for PC or consoles you can go up to 8000 (I guess) But for mobile devices the safe max size is 2048. Some older devices won’t support 4096 sprite sheets.
2-No. There is no need (or preference) that every sprite sheet should be the same size. Just make sure every sprite sheet size is in power of 2 numbers. That’s important.
3-To my knowledge, nothing. It is just the way unity scales your 2d sprite into the 3d game world. Just choose the size that your artwork looks good. Again, it doesn’t have to be the same in all of your sprite sheets.
I believe (but this is just a guess, I actually never worked on a project to the point it started needing any graphics), everything gets easier when everything size in pixels is a power of two. (a 1024x2048 sprite would be easier for me to work with than a 72x99 sprite for sure).
About the difference between a picture 512 px with 100px/unit and 30 px/unit, i know there is a lot of problems happening about that when you create pixel art. It will be harder to figure out there is a problem with “hand drawn art”.
Still, i would make the pixel/unit be a power of two. (in fact, a 128 ppu going down to 64 ppu will maybe make some pixels “mix” with closest pixels (anti aliasing feel) but i’m not even sure about that, maybe it will just fell aliased a bit)
Anyway, as long as anything is a power of two, it’s easier for the one putting it into the scene, to put it in the scene easily. He just needs a simple pocket calculator.
(Beware, there might be protocols I (We?) don’t know about, Make sure everything said there seems right before following it)