Interchangeable "Skins" with AnimatedSprite

cramsey86

I have a "Player" scene (KinematicBody2D as root node) that uses AnimatedSprite for its animations: + idle + walk + run + die

I have several different characters that have frames for each of these same animations as well.

I am curious how I can make these animations interchangeable.

I was thinking maybe I could create separate "animation" scenes (AnimatedSprite as root node) and then I could just set the AnimatedSprite of my "Player" scene equal to which ever "skin" (animation scene) I wanted the player to have.

I am not sure if this is possible, or if there is a better way of accomplishing this?

Thanks!

GlyphTheWolf

Hi,

I think there are actually many ways you can achieve that.

One solution is what you already mentioned.

Another one would be to use sprite sheet, then AnimationPlayer + Sprite and to change skin you just need to adjust some sprite parameters (like set proper texture with desired skin and maybe change frames size if they are different)

Next possible solution would by to just give player many AnimatedSprite nodes, play animations for all of them, but show only one desired sprite.

I would go with second solution, since if your frames for all skins have the same sizes then changing skin would be as easy as changing texture to different sprite sheet.

cramsey86

Thank you for your response. With the Sprite Sheet option, are you referring to a Single Sprite Sheet? Reason I ask is because there are probably thousands of images with all the different skins and frames needed for all those actions.

GlyphTheWolf

@cramsey86 said: Thank you for your response. With the Sprite Sheet option, are you referring to a Single Sprite Sheet? Reason I ask is because there are probably thousands of images with all the different skins and frames needed for all those actions.

Hm, like some equipment etc.?

Then you could use more than one sprite sheet, but control all of them by the same AnimationPlayer. But then of course each sprite sheet need to mach size to properly align.

I used approach like that for some small test project with character and equipment (like clothes/armor) and it worked fine, except that creating sprite sheets was a bit slow for me, but 2D art is not my best skill, so maybe I just don't know how to make it better and faster.

cramsey86

Hm, like some equipment etc.?

Think skins like Fortnite. The idea is if you beat certain NPCs you can unlock their "look".

exuin

If you're using an AnimatedSprite then you can just swap out the SpriteFrames resource as long as all the animations have the same names

GlyphTheWolf

@cramsey86 said:

Hm, like some equipment etc.?

Think skins like Fortnite. The idea is if you beat certain NPCs you can unlock their "look".

Ah, so I would create one sprite sheet per skin and then when you want to change skin just change to different sprite sheet.

Or that also seems possible solution:

@exuin said: If you're using an AnimatedSprite then you can just swap out the SpriteFrames resource as long as all the animations have the same names

cramsey86

@exuin said: If you're using an AnimatedSprite then you can just swap out the SpriteFrames resource as long as all the animations have the same names

How exactly do you do this? I have been looking at the documentation for SpriteFrames and it looks like I would have to rebuild each animation from scratch.

exuin

Yeah D: