Import from TexturePacker spritesheet

[bitsofbas]

Hi!

Just started Unity and 2dtk a couple of days ago, so please be gentle :-)

I've got a sprite sheet created in TexturePacker ( which reads animations created in flash and also filters identical frames and more goodness ) so I wanted to use this sprite sheet with 2dtk, but I can only find info on doing this at runtime. As the sheet contains a whole bunch of animations, I'd prefer importing this sheet straight into the editor so I can set up my animations.

How can I do this ( if possible at all )?

Cheers,
bas

[unikronsoftware]

It isn't possible directly, but, it is possible to write a bit of editor script to do it.
1. Import the texturepacker atlas and create a sprite collection data object as you would at runtime.
2. Create a prefab in the project and assign the object to it.
3. Important: Save the assigned material as an asset in the project.
4. Rebuild the index.

You'll obviously be responsible in updating it when the texture packer atlas changes, etc. but apart from that it should work fine.

[bitsofbas]

I'm afraid this is a little over my head at this stage. Just starting out with Unity and 2dtk and I haven't quite yet touched editor scripting.

Going to give it a shot though because I would really like this to work. It would be great if you could give me some more details on how to do this, but obviously I completely understand if you don't :-)

Thanks!

[bitsofbas]

Man, I learned a LOT today! I think I've managed to follow your ( in my eyes, cryptic ;-) steps and I think I actually made something which works. Unity really is a joy to work with :-)

Just in case someone is looking to do the same, I'm attaching the .cs

Instructions:
* DISCLAMER: USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. This is one of the first things I ever wrote in Unity, so it wouldn't hurt to have a look at the script and make sure for yourself it's safe to use.
* Add the .cs to a folder named Editor
* Create your .png and .bytes files in TexturePacker. They should both have the same name
* Select from within Unity the png atlas file(s)
* From the menu: 2D Toolkit/Make TexturePacker Sprite Collection

Now you'll find a new Material and the Sprite Collection in the same folder.


One question though, I did this:

Code: [Select]

tk2dRuntime.SpriteCollectionSize scs = tk2dRuntime.SpriteCollectionSize.Explicit( 1, 640 );
But I'm not sure those are the best values to use. Any suggestions?


edit: Updated version. Don't use the previous one!

[unikronsoftware]

Well done for getting it to work so quickly
I hadn't got around to replying to this but you've managed to sort it out.

The sprite collection size - use the ortho size for the camera you'll be using this in (this selection is pretty arbitrary, but 10-20 works best with built in Unity physics out of the box). For the height, use the height of the native resolution of the game - so if its iPhone4 landscape, use 640.

Hope that helps.

[bitsofbas]

Is that "native resolution" a value I can get from somewhere? Or do I just put a static value in?

Thanks for your help!

[unikronsoftware]

The native resolution is what resolution you're planning to have your game run at. Eg. if you're creating your game for iPhone4 in landscape, the native resolution would be 960x640.

[bitsofbas]

Ok, got it. Sizing to fit screen etc is probably more basic-Unity related, so I'll just read up on that on my own.

Another question I'd like to ask... To run as little textures as possible, my bitmap font is also in the TexturePacker atlas. You think it's possible to hook that into your font classes somehow? Can you give me a hint about where to start ( if at all ) ?

Cheers,
bas

[unikronsoftware]

That will be a bit harder - by the time its in texture packer you've already lost all the rest of the information required for the font... Not impossible though.
You need to generate a tk2dFontData object.
For every character you'll need a tk2dFontChar.
p0 and p1 are the geometry extrema. uv0 and uv1 corresponding UV values.
advance can be p1.x - p0.x to advance by exactly the same size as the character, but you might want a bit of "spacing".
You can ignore "channel" and "gradientUv" and possibly kerning.

At the moment the font code can't handle Texture Packer rotated textures but if you can get all the non-rotated glyphs to work, adding support for that won't be too much work.

[bitsofbas]

by the time its in texture packer you've already lost all the rest of the information required for the font...

I still have my bmfont xml though and the fonts are not fragmented in TexturePacker ( which is not optimal, but probably more comfortable to keep things together ) so just by knowing my font-area offset in the atlas, I can track all the characters.

Like last time, I don't immediately understand what you mean, but I'm sure it will start making sense as I start investigating.

Thanks again!

[unikronsoftware]

If you've got your BMFont XML it should be a lot simpler, also the font not being fragmented makes it so much easier. I was explaining assuming you were going to reconstruct glyphs from the little fragments in the atlas.

In this case, take a look at the tk2dFontBuilder.cs class - that imports the bmfont and but assumes it uses the full texture. You need to do almost all of that, skipping the material (use the same material as the sprite collection you have created) and for the final UVs, you want to scale and offset it to match the region of the atlas your font texture is in.

[bitsofbas]

The font thing doesn't look too complicated, so I'll just assume it can be done and delay the actual coding until my game really needs it.

In the meantime a more pressing matter has surged; I'm experiencing disastrous side effects on my SpriteAnimation when using my script from the beginning of this thread. -- The problem seems to be that upon updating the SpriteCollectionData, my animation clips sometimes get orphaned from their Collection ( and just opening a clip makes the whole animation editor crash, so I can't fix the broken clips and have to start from scratch with all the animations ).

Can it be that when running my script twice and overwriting a previous SpriteCollectionData, I should copy a certain unique identifier value from the old to the new one? If so, which variable would that be?

Thanks again!

[unikronsoftware]

If you run your script again, it will create a new prefab every time. Instead of doing that, you should check to see if the prefab exists, and ReplacePrefab if it already exists.

Creating a new prefab will kill all existing connections to it, as far as Unity is concerned they are completely different assets.

[bitsofbas]

Awesome! Thanks! I'll update the script tomorrow for those who downloaded it.

[bitsofbas]

So I've changed some things to get the prefab replaced instead of newly created. Truth is, I don't notice much of a difference.

What worries me is that after replacing the Sprite Collection Prefab, upon opening the Animation editor and adding a new clip, the default Collection is set to "-" ( the dropdown can be changed to the real Collection though ). This is the same behaviour I got before changing the Prefab replacing/overwriting code.

The "-" seems to be the name for a "transient sprite collection", as you call it in your code @ tk2dSpriteGuiUtility.cs line 231. - I'm not sure if this is just an insignificant remainder of instantiating a SpriteCollection by code, or if it could be responsible for losing my animations the other day.

Thanks, and sorry to keep bugging you with this.