Sorry for beeing curt, I was reading this thread and it reminded me of those recent wall posts with generic questions, kinda why we had this recent thread about how it does not always bring you further just asking (nor this community).
I can be very talkative when the thread starts with a short question but also brings loads to the table like own research to really kick start a discussion. But if its just a vague question that can be researched on Google I am not that motivated to put to much effort in a reply- especially if there are already other threads covering it.
So what I am saying: If the initial poster puts some effort in his post (images, research, links,...) people like me like contributing even more with quality posts.
Ok lets sort things here:
GlueIt - free
- 8bit alpha
- standalone
Is the only standalone tool I am aware of that supports 8 bit alpha transparencies. But that idiot cleared his website (had some trojan or adware links on it before though, but his tool was free of it). I provided alternative link
XnView:
free
- easy pic selection
- can be custom sorted (name, date, size,...)
- no 8 bit transparency !!!
XnView is very basic and not meant for a professional tool. But it works for non 8 bit alpha sprites.
Zwoptex- 20$
- sprite packing
- optional 90 rotations
- lots of nice dev options
Looked into this recently among other commercial tools for work- mainly for iphone dev and some hardcore as3 cases where filesize and performance matters.
texture packer- free (basic version, ok for most of us)
- 8bit alpha (RGBA888
- sprite packing
- optional 90 rotations
- nice tweaking sliders
- nice export sets
My pick we started playing with it at work and it seems to be the most professional pick + its free in the basic version. You might not need the packing perhaps at first but if you are developing for mobiles or other low spec hardware it doesn't hurt optimizing your sprite sheets ;)
somewhat related:
SWFSheet- free
- adobe AIR
- works only with SWF/ SWC sources
- meant for flash devs
Its a nice approach for flash devs although rather primitive but a nice prototype. It creates sprite sheets from SWF (flash movies) and other sources around flash. This is usefull if you have animators that animate your things in flash but you need to build the game for consoles or other platforms (iphone & co).
Sprite Render Script
max script
- free (if you own max)
- different approach: guides you rendering sprites
- cool possibilities (render normal,...)
well i mentioned it already
here. Cool stuff done in maxscript
a few photoshop scripts (instead of a standalone tool)
CSX v1.4 (contact sheet X)- free but requires PS
- bloody bload options
- slow (because its in PS written in JSX)
- lets you select a folder with images to process
Read the
docs for in detailed info. Seems to be the master script for photoshop for contact sheet related matters. There is already a contact sheet script that comes with Photoshop (look in the File > scripts section) its the base version of this one as mentioned at
Adobe's blog. Maybe check the default one first ;) but be aware that it might be very slow
Generate Sprite Sheet.js- free but requires PS
- expects you to work with the animation frames in CS3+
- primitive
just read the link, has some screens but don't expect to much of it
Linear Mode
