Sprite sizing help? (Sorry if already answered or if it's in the wrong thread)

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Goldie28
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Sprite sizing help? (Sorry if already answered or if it's in the wrong thread)

#1 Post by Goldie28 »

Hey guys.
I'm the sole artist and programmer for a non-commercial kinetic novel (storytelling novel) that me and some Japanese friends are planning to make.
Right now I finished one sprite but I'm not sure if I should start over and draw full bodies or just draw waist-ups? I'm not good with full bodies but I feel like it could be useful to make the characters look their ideal heights. Personally I want to stick to just waist-up drawings because I probably cannot draw full body sprites to save my life or this game.

my Ren.py game window size is 1280px x 720px and I use 720px high as the base for the sprites to draw their heights accordingly. But my problem is that we plan to include closeup sprites, so how would I draw the sprites at a detailed size and then resize it to 720px high? Would I have to double the height to 1440px and resize it to 720 for the non-closeup usage sprites?

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Per K Grok
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Re: Sprite sizing help? (Sorry if already answered or if it's in the wrong thread)

#2 Post by Per K Grok »

I am not sure if I have understood your question correctly.
If you are asking how to resize an image in-game, you can use 'zoom'.

If you have an image named Betty you can show Betty at half-size using this code.

Code: Select all

   show Betty:
       zoom 0.5
And that question should probably have been asked in the Ren'Py Q and A forum. :)

Not sure if re-sizing in-game is better than having two different images for full body and half body. You might want to do a bit of testing before you commit to one solution.

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Re: Sprite sizing help? (Sorry if already answered or if it's in the wrong thread)

#3 Post by Goldie28 »

Per K Grok wrote: Sun Jun 10, 2018 12:38 pm I am not sure if I have understood your question correctly.
If you are asking how to resize an image in-game, you can use 'zoom'.

If you have an image named Betty you can show Betty at half-size using this code.

Code: Select all

   show Betty:
       zoom 0.5
And that question should probably have been asked in the Ren'Py Q and A forum. :)

Not sure if re-sizing in-game is better than having two different images for full body and half body. You might want to do a bit of testing before you commit to one solution.
I think I meant to ask if should I use a bigger canvas that's two times the height/width of the Renpy screen 1280x720? So the original image would be in better quality for closeup sprites, and for non-closeups I would just have to rezise?
Also with the half-size code you mentioned, then can you also turn a closeup sprite to be "standing" further away? Like, crop it (i think)? to a smaller size?

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Re: Sprite sizing help? (Sorry if already answered or if it's in the wrong thread)

#4 Post by Per K Grok »

Goldie28 wrote: Wed Jun 13, 2018 10:29 am ---
I think I meant to ask if should I use a bigger canvas that's two times the height/width of the Renpy screen 1280x720? So the original image would be in better quality for closeup sprites, and for non-closeups I would just have to rezise?
Also with the half-size code you mentioned, then can you also turn a closeup sprite to be "standing" further away? Like, crop it (i think)? to a smaller size?
Image
The bigger the image the more of a closeup it will be. Your image should be at least as big as your closest close-up, in the illustration figure 1. For this example the image height would be about twice that of the games height (the black frame in the illustration represents the game's size). So if your game have the height of 720 the height of the source image for your character would be about 1440 for a close-up of the order in the example. If you want more of a close-up the source image need to be higher. You do not want to have to zoom up (more than 1.0).

zoom 0.5 would in this case result in a full body view, figure 2

Resizing to a smaller number, i.e. 0.35, the character (figure 3) will seem to be further away than figure 2.

Crop is something different. That is to draw only part of the source image to the screen. Figure 4 is an example of a cropped image.
crop(x, y, w, h)

The illustration is just a mock-up. The sizes are not exactly the same as I have used in the text above.

I don't know if there is any specific sizes that are usually are used for Ren'Py games. I would suggest that you try out what you feel are good looks for what you want to do.

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Re: Sprite sizing help? (Sorry if already answered or if it's in the wrong thread)

#5 Post by Goldie28 »

Per K Grok wrote: Wed Jun 13, 2018 3:43 pm
Goldie28 wrote: Wed Jun 13, 2018 10:29 am ---
I think I meant to ask if should I use a bigger canvas that's two times the height/width of the Renpy screen 1280x720? So the original image would be in better quality for closeup sprites, and for non-closeups I would just have to rezise?
Also with the half-size code you mentioned, then can you also turn a closeup sprite to be "standing" further away? Like, crop it (i think)? to a smaller size?
Image
The bigger the image the more of a closeup it will be. Your image should be at least as big as your closest close-up, in the illustration figure 1. For this example the image height would be about twice that of the games height (the black frame in the illustration represents the game's size). So if your game have the height of 720 the height of the source image for your character would be about 1440 for a close-up of the order in the example. If you want more of a close-up the source image need to be higher. You do not want to have to zoom up (more than 1.0).

zoom 0.5 would in this case result in a full body view, figure 2

Resizing to a smaller number, i.e. 0.35, the character (figure 3) will seem to be further away than figure 2.

Crop is something different. That is to draw only part of the source image to the screen. Figure 4 is an example of a cropped image.
crop(x, y, w, h)

The illustration is just a mock-up. The sizes are not exactly the same as I have used in the text above.

I don't know if there is any specific sizes that are usually are used for Ren'Py games. I would suggest that you try out what you feel are good looks for what you want to do.
This is kind of what I needed...! Is there a way you can make "1" zoom out/be resized to show waist up and not the whole body? My idea of your example of "1" is a headshot view of a sprite as if the character is standing right in front of you.

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Re: Sprite sizing help? (Sorry if already answered or if it's in the wrong thread)

#6 Post by Aviala »

I'd just draw the sprite double the size just as you suggested - so if your canvas is 720p high, then you should probably draw your sprites on a canvas that's at least twice that tall (I usually draw on an A4 size canvas anyway and resize it to the desired size when I'm done - it's easier to work on details that way).

You could just create a canvas that's 720p high and as wide as you think the sprites will be and then just resize the canvas to 200% before you start drawing. Then draw the sprite like you normally would. If the character will never be in a full body shot, you can draw it thigh-up or waist-up, it doesn't matter much.

You could just use the big sprite and show it with zoom 0.5 when you want it to be normal and then show it without the zoom when you want to show the closeup (you'll probably need to position it using a custom transform. https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/atl.html#atl ) You can even add a linear transform or some other fancy animation to make it look like the character is stepping closer, but that's just extra.

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Re: Sprite sizing help? (Sorry if already answered or if it's in the wrong thread)

#7 Post by Per K Grok »

Goldie28 wrote: Fri Jun 15, 2018 1:21 pm
---
This is kind of what I needed...! Is there a way you can make "1" zoom out/be resized to show waist up and not the whole body? My idea of your example of "1" is a headshot view of a sprite as if the character is standing right in front of you.
The principle is the same.

You make your image 1 big enough for the head to be the height of the game screen. Anything outside the screen will of course not be rendered.

In my example the legs of the character is outside the screen and will not be drawn.

You can use zoom to make the image larger (i.e, zoom 1.5) but it will not look as good, so you don't want to do that.

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