Existing lisencees may obtain their free updates from the download page. For more information about SpriteWorks, please see our product page.

SpriteWorks2 is a complete overhaul from the ground up. It’s foundation has shifted from XNA to T3D and comes with a new look and a lot of great improvements. But the process of taking 3D models and generating animated sprite sheets for 2D games is the same. Existing customers are using SpriteWorks to create art for iPhone, TGB, and Torque X 2D games.

Collada 3D Support

One of the biggest features is support for the Collada 3D format. Collada is a popular 3D format that’s supported by every major 3D editor, including 3D Studio Max, Maya, XSI, and Blender. You can easily load your 3D models into SpriteWorks via Collada export.

New Lighting

SpriteWorks2 also offers even better lighting support. Now you can change the brightness and color of the light source, resulting in unique rendering effects. You can also use a mouse to drag the source light into position. You can also apply post-process image effects, such as blur, to add even more to your sprite sheets.

New Usability

Lastly, overall usability was closely reviewed and improved to make it as easy and efficient as possible to bring in 3D models, pose them, and produce animated sprite sheets. In addition to the existing camera sliders, you can drag the mouse around to move and rotate the model into position.

Position your mouse at the top-left corner of the viewport to reveal a popup menu that controls model placement and orientation by mouse. You can either capture a single frame of animation or create an entire animated sprite sheet.

After specifying how many animated cells you want, press the Create Sprite button to create an anti-aliased, translucent sprite sheet similare to the one below. An image like this can quickly add 3D graphic art to your T2D, iTGB, or Torque X 2D game. Manny existing customers are using SpriteWorks to create content for Flash and Silverlight Web games.

But quickly migrating the original SpriteWorks functionality based on XNA to T3D was not a quick task. Game developer Daniel Hopkins was a tremendous help in getting key functionality working in a very short period. He’s a fantastic T3D developer and deserves a ton of credit for his contribution.

The Future of SpriteWorks

SpriteWorks2 is definitely a huge leap forward from the original release, but it’s also just the beginning. The plan to quickly move over from XNA to T3D was meant to open new development possibilities, such as Mac OS platform release, support for even more 3D formats, and enabling new post-process effects, such as glow and cartoon rendering.

Availability

Existing SpriteWorks customers may now download the latest Beta release of SpriteWorks2 for Free from their download page on the EnvyGames website. For more information about SpriteWorks, please visit the ]SpriteWorks product page.

Beta Note: The SpriteWorks2 Beta will only load 3D shapes located within the Application’s root directory or below.  C:\Program Files\EnvyGames\SpriteWorks2  (Default)

John K.
www.envygames.com

Since big game studios can’t afford to take risks, it’s up to the independent game developer to create new and innovative game concepts. Much like their independent film counterparts, the independent game developer is not risking millions, but rather thousands of dollars. And tens of tousands in earnings is typically enough for independents to live off of, especially after producing a small collection of games. The key is to break away from the fixed mold that big studios follow. Independents may not be able to compete with a 300-person studio on a polished FPS game, but they can take them on with a fun and quirky independent game that everyone must have.

Independent game developers need to really leverage their strengths against big studios by using their flexibility and creativity. Crazy new game concepts may not appeal to all consumers, but it will likely appeal to enough of them to make an independent game profitable. Here’s a fun tool to help think about new game concepts: The Game Idea Generator.  It requires the Silverlight 2 Web browser plug-in for Internet Explorer, Safari, or Firefox.

The tool is just for fun and meant to show how creative thinking can lead to an interesting game concept. Clicking the “Generate Idea” button, I ended up with “You should create a Pirate style RPG Quest Adventure game that features Aliens.” Why not? Imagine if the film “Predator” was set in the late 1700′s on the pirate occupied Turtle Island. No single pirate could take on the alien, but with their loot and Rum threatened, pirates might work together to take on the alien hunter. They might even have a temporary truce with the British to work together to defeat the alien. It’s not likely a game that a big studio might take on a game like this. But an disciplined team independent game developers with some artistic talent, programming skills, and a flexible game engine should be able to turn this into a winner.

In the coming days, new features will be added to this website, including a discussion forum to post questions about our games,  our tools, or even XNA and the Torque X Game Engine – anything that game development related. We will also be adding new online shopping capabilities that make it easier to own our games and tools as well as other independent games that we feel are deserving.

EnvyGames remains comitted to producing exciting new independent games and empowering independent game developers with articles and tools to express their creativity through the art of game making.

Welcome to the new EnvyGames!

SpriteWorks is based on XNA and, of course a running instance of the Torque X Engine. However, the images that are produced are translucent .png files that will work with any 2D graphics engine, including Torque X 2D and TGB. The sample sprite sheet here is a web-friendly, but non-transucent .jpg file. In the video above, SpriteWorks is used to take the Boombot sample DTS model that comes with Torque X, select an animation (in this case “run”), generate the animated sprite sheet, then import it into Torque X Builder 2D. But it will work with just about any DTS file, from Kork the sample player to the many buildings and vehicles sold as content packs. And with support for .X and .FBX, you can even look to resources, including TurboSquid.com for even more models that can become textures for your 2D game… and some of them are free.