I want to make a 2D model in iOS programatically. Like this:
This is taken from the app Gomoji.
I googled it but not get the proper solution.
This character is also moving so it can move hands and the legs meanwhile I want to change the colour of the hands etc.
Could it be possible with SpriteKit, SceneKit, gif, SVG or anything else?
This is an incredible amount of work in code, with SpriteKit and actions.
You might be better off using the puppet features of After Effects to creation motion frame sequences, and then bring them into SpriteKit and string them together and jump between the sequences as necessary.
Start here, to understand the puppetry tools in AE:
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/animating-puppet-tools.html
Once you've learnt the lingo, head on over to youtube to pick up tips on how to do 2D arms, head wobbles, etc.
There's also a face animator in the latest versions of After Effects, that might be helpful, too.
Generally speaking, this is still a lot of work. And a lot of fiddling to get it to look "just so". But doing this visually, with manual mouse controls and instant playback before exporting image sequences from AE will be lightyears faster than attempting to do this with joints and code in SpriteKit or any other game engine.
Related
As an introduction and context, I'm currently a novice iOS app developer and I want to make sure I'm not reinventing the wheel too much as I make this app (reinventing wheels can get very expensive.)
The app will allow the user to download our videos off the internet and will allow storage for offline usage. The problem with storing these videos on the device is that many of them will be too long and thus too big to be practical to store.
The videos are quite simple however, consisting of a couple short "real" video clips at the beginning and end, with the bulk of the video being still images animated around the screen. The animations would consist solely of opacity and simple transformation keyframes (translate, scale, rotate around static anchor point), and would require a variety of easing functions for each transition.
The hardest part likely would be that the "video" player will also have to be able to track with an audio player's timecode, and will have to support seeking to any arbitrary point like a normal video player.
So, now that I've described the problem, here's the solution I've come up with so far. Hopefully doing it this way will reduce the probability of XY problems. :)
The idea is to basically do a dumbed-down version of what Final Cut and other editing programs do with animations—have a bunch of clips, sometimes overlapping, and be able to animate the position, scale, rotation, and opacity of each using keyframes.
My first instinct as far as implementation goes is to use some of iOS's game engine stuff to do animations (maybe SceneKit because it seems to allow animations to use scene time as opposed to real time, despite the fact that it's primarily 3d and I am doing 2d animations) and manually handle syncing time with the audio player, as well as manually handling the adding and removing of nodes from the scene when seeking through the video and when clips begin/end.
What are some built-in systems, plugins, etc. that I can take advantage of to make this easier and faster to develop and maintain? Double points if I don't have to transcode the animations by hand to some custom format.
As I mentioned in my comment your question is rather broad and contains multiple questions in one, I will address what you mentioned to be likely the hardest part:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/avplayeritem
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/avasset
Instead of SceneKit, take a look at SpriteKit and its SKVideoNode.
Also, research Metal video processing. There are quit a few example projects available you could use as a starting point.
When building a game with SpriteKit, with a platformer game (like Doodle Jump for example), is it preferable to move the camera up, or the background nodes down ?
What is the standard practice in other frameworks ?
MOVE THE CAMERA!!!
One of the weirdest things about 2D game engines is that it often takes them a series of versions to get a camera.
They should be born with them.
SpriteKit was no different, it took forever to get a camera.
Now that it has one, never ever think of not using it.
Will make your life a million times simpler.
I can think of no exceptions, but look forward to being proven wrong.
move background was HOTFIX until proper cam support added.
use the cam. its easy and fun. no reason to not imo.
I'm trying to figure out the best way to procedurally animate the growing of a 2D plant in iOS.
I want the plant to animate to give an encroaching feeling to the user.
Basically, to animate the growing of a branch, with little buds that will eventually animate into full grown leaves.
To breathe a little life into it, I'd also like the plant to sway a bit as it grows, rather than feeling hand painted on the screen.
One way I've thought of is to use CGPaths and Bezier curves to create the shape of the stalk and the leaves, but I'm not entirely sure how to animate the drawing of the paths. Once I get the "drawing" of the stalk, i'd like to "plant" little buds at certain points on the stalk, as the line is growing/animating and these buds will also start to grow outwards from the plant.
Any suggestions on what route to take to accomplish this task? I'd prefer to procedurally animate as opposed to hand drawing each frame and animating that way. My reasoning is that I imagine procedurally animating will be less time consuming, give me more control over different aspects of the animation, and be reusable in other projects (not to mention, it will be fun to program!)
I've come across this blog posting for the drawing of animated lines:
http://oleb.net/blog/2010/12/animating-drawing-of-cgpath-with-cashapelayer/
Perhaps this would be a starting approach for achieving the results I want, I need to sit down and go through the code he posted.
Also, maybe this is something that would be easier to do using cocos2d or something similar? Or perhaps quartzcore and core animation will work fine.
Thanks for any suggestions you might have, any information is helpful at this point.
(Great question! Posting this as a "community wiki" since it is not an answer but just some references and I didn't want the links to get screwed up in comments. Perhaps people want to add to this?)
I did a simple search on "procedural tree branching code" and there were lots of interesting hits - really rich area.
A post on gameDev.stackExhange pointed to this great resource: Algorithmic Botany
Also Snappy Tree is pretty amazing and the source code is available.
These two also sound interesting:
TReal is a program capable of generating realistic 3D tree models.
Arbaro is an implementation of the tree generating algorithm described in Jason Weber & Joseph Penn: "Creation and Rendering of Realistic Trees" written in Java.
Perhaps more accessible to the OP and with a less complex result are these actionScript tutorials on fractal trees. ActionScript drawing code is pretty easily translated to Core Graphics.
Right now I have coded about 80% of my game and the remaining 20% is the actual game part of it. I need to know how I should go upon actually making the game part.
Pretty much it will be somewhat similar to Doodle Jump. There will be gravity, the accelerometer, and a spawn system for platforms. I need to know if I should use UIKit or Cocos2D for this.
I know I can do gravity and use the accelerometer easily using UIKit but I am worried about the platform part. My 'Doodle Jump character' is not a regular square or rectangle so should I just crop it as best I can? The reason I am worried is because say the character falls on a platform, so his body could be a little off since CGRectIntersectsRect does not have pixel collision detection, so do you think it is fine the way it is?
If you need more info or aren't sure what I am trying to do, just let me know. In the end I just need to know if I should use Cocos2D or UIKit.
Please let me know your thoughts.
Thanks!
My answer would be that, while you may be able to develop the game in UIKit, my suspiction is that it will be better in the long run to do it in Cocos2D. Not only will you have tools which are better for doing stuff like collision detection, you can also use a Physics Engine to handle the gravity and things like that. Basically, Cocos2d was made to do exactly the kinds of things you want to do, and UIKit wasn't...it was made for user interfaces.
Still, the collision detection you do will, mostly likely, not need to be down the level of individual pixels. One rectangle might be enough, or perhaps you can use several to get more accuracy. So can you pull it off in UIKit...maybe, but I bet your game will turnout better overall if you use Cocos2d.
I want to write something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S4KpCkHDqM I mean, I want to have 2D gaming space, but to have stylized as 3D, so my characters will move on the surface, but will have nice 3D effect. I wounder if Flash/ActionScript will do? Any other suggestions?
Flash and Actionscript can definitely accomplish this. There are at least 2 ways to accomplish the 3D look in 2D space.
The easiest is to do as #Blender said in the comments. Render some 3D images and bring them into flash. There are easy tools in flash to create animated sprites, including a native movieClip class, that has a timeline to play back frame-based animation.
But there is also full 3D in flash. You can bring low-polygon 3D models into flash easily using free and open source libraries such as Away3d (away3d.org) and papervision (papervision3d.org). Presently, flash player 10 has runs slowly when using these libraries.
But Adobe is about to release a new version of the player (version 11) that supports open GL for 3D and has significant performance improvements.
Away3D and papervision have already developed version of their libraries to support the new beta player and openGL.
So to summarize, yes - flash can make a game like that. It is currently the best way to develop games that are intended to be played in a browser. Because at least for the time being it has the most widespread support, and is stable between platforms and browsers.
Your example is pretty much entirely 2D: it just uses effects like shadows, animation and parallax scrolling between layers to achieve a (mildly) 3D effect.
As Plastic Sturgeon and Blender have pointed out, Blender might help for creating your assets - but it has a pretty steep learning curve, and you might be more comfortable 'faking it' in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop if you've used those before.
Once you've created your assets, you need a platform to put together your gameplay: Flash is one possibility, but you could also look at Unity3D, which has good support for 2D and 3D, and has a browser plug-in if you want to make your game web-based.
If you're looking for a java-based solution, you could try Processing, which is cross-platform, and can export to javascript for web deployment. It's not exactly designed as a gaming environment, but it might do the trick - and it's free.
Hope this helps.