JAJAJA
A member registered Jan 21, 2016 · View creator page →
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Heyo!
Kudos on this app, it's genuinely groundbreaking in gamedev for a lot of us.
I wanted to make a case for effect presets in the context of their use in Software like Spritemancer or Juice FX, which are currently dead and partly non-working projects. I think a huge factor for its explosive popularity initially is that it supports a library of drag-and-drop effect racks that let you apply a baseline first, instead of having to start from scratch with each element.
What are they?
You click a preset, and it applies animation node data to X properties starting from the playhead position. That's it!
Before/after applying a "squash" size animation.
Proposal overview
In Pixelover, I'd imagine it as a new menu folder next to shaders called Effects/Presets. Like in After Effects, it would let you apply presets to the current object like a fade out, but in the spirit of gamedev software like Spritemancer it would be more complicated effects like easing+tint for idle, walking, hit, attack effects... These are a great baseline to get a feel for a character's actions before drawing new poses for example.
With the possibility of adding to this feature the automatic creation of objects, lots of ideas come to mind, like an explosion effect that eases+tints the object, then creates two particle objects on top that activate after X seconds, or an animated cooldown timer that gets added over the object.
If this existed, I'd be constantly making presets and putting them in categories like "Easings" (squash, stretch, loopSquish...), "Impacts" (hit, dead, explode...) and swiftly using them in my projects.
Why add this?
I could really see Pixelover become a more casual application after this addition. Hop in, add a sprite, apply a preset, tweak it and export. Currently this is possible and the UX is overall super good, but gamedev can get really overwhelming and tedious so every bit helps. Also:
- Tweening and tinting take time to code and can become expensive on big scenes, and layering other effects would make baking the only option.
- I'd bet that a resource creation community could come out of a feature like this. I'd definitely be uploading my preset folders for others to use.
- Spritemancer and JuiceFX have been incredibly profitable and there is a gap in the market for a feature like this, as both are on hiatus/dead.
Cheers!