iOS Game animation related question

[elcalvin1211]

I just wonder , Do you Animate moving ,fighting like actions in 'After effect' like softwares for ipad games ? or use coding in sprite kit ? (for 2d games )

If both things are possible then which one is more efficient ?

Sorry for stupid question XD i am learning xcode so was jsut wondering about this .

 

[Dekard]

It would probably depend on the type of game and the way you are creating it.

 

[Jessica Lares]

You would create multiple images that simulate the motion, and then make the code to work with those images.

You wouldn't use After Effects for that, that's for video and you'd be working with PNGs. Adobe Flash Professional would work to start with, but there are better programs.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

I would use Unity. Last year they added a lot of features to improve the workflow for making 2D games, and they've always had the best 3D workflow.

 

[omenatarhuri]

Spritekit makes it super-easy to move sprites around, but if you want them to really animate (look like walking for instance), I think you'd a need a set of images and then just scroll through them. This should be doable with Spritekit too I presume.

 

[VPrime]

There are 2 main options:
Keyframe Animation
and Bones/Skeletal animations.

With keyframe animation you simply draw each frame of your animation in your designed art program (photoshop). Then export each frame and switch between them with code.
You may also want to put all these frames on a sprite sheet to reduce memory usage. I like to use Texture Packer to create sprite sheets, it exports to the most common engines.

Bones animations are created in many different ways. One way is to just create each part of a character separately.. So you have Head, arm, leg, etc.
How you animate really depends on your game engine. Some engines have built in support for bones based animation systems so you need to see what they expect.
Spine 2D got a lot of attention when it launched: http://esotericsoftware.com/ looks like a good way to create bones animations, and can export to some pretty common engines.

Keyframe animations are usually more fixed. Great for platformers, or RPG games.. They are also great for detailed movements. There are a lot of other benefits as well. Oh one big one is keyframe animations are fairly easy to implement.


Bones are great for dynamic situations. You can have animations blend into a single animation... Like a character can move its head independently while playing a run animation, or you can aim a gun while jumping and running.
Additionally bones are great for performance, instead of many frames, or large sprite sheets of frame,s you have a smaller sprite sheet of a few body parts. All the animations are handled through code.
Another benefit is that you can easily customize your character with out having to completely reanimate it. So you can swap the head, arm etc. at any time with out having to go back and re-animate your character.
But unlike keyframes, bones are fairly tricky to set up.. And often not worth the time. Oh and they may not give you the desired effect, they often have a certain "look" to them.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Bones animations are created in many different ways. One way is to just create each part of a character separately.. So you have Head, arm, leg, etc.
How you animate really depends on your game engine. Some engines have built in support for bones based animation systems so you need to see what they expect.
Spine 2D got a lot of attention when it launched: http://esotericsoftware.com/ looks like a good way to create bones animations, and can export to some pretty common engines.

Bones are great for dynamic situations. You can have animations blend into a single animation... Like a character can move its head independently while playing a run animation, or you can aim a gun while jumping and running.
Additionally bones are great for performance, instead of many frames, or large sprite sheets of frame,s you have a smaller sprite sheet of a few body parts. All the animations are handled through code.
Another benefit is that you can easily customize your character with out having to completely reanimate it. So you can swap the head, arm etc. at any time with out having to go back and re-animate your character.
But unlike keyframes, bones are fairly tricky to set up.. And often not worth the time. Oh and they may not give you the desired effect, they often have a certain "look" to them.

Unity allows you to use this style of animation in 2D projects. They probably also allow sprite animation, but I've never tried.

 

[VPrime]

Unity allows you to use this style of animation in 2D projects. They probably also allow sprite animation, but I've never tried.

Yup unity allows for both. It's pretty robust, that you can pretty much do both. You could always write your own bones system for unity as well if it didnt support it.