Project: Paper2D

[Michael_Noland]

@JasonW;95034

Hi ,

I was working with Paper 2D again today, a lot of great new features by way, Thank you! I built two sprites with sprite editor, with 3D physics enabled. I can drop instances of them in scene view, but I have to turn on simulate physics for each instance. Is there a way to turn on in sprite, before dropping it into scene, or is what building a blueprint class is for?

I tried making an actor blueprint, add my sprite as a component, but physics settings are greyed out and won’t let me turn on simulate physics. When I work with 3D meshes, I can turn on simulate physics in component editor with no problem. So I was wondering if is a current limitation in 4.3, or just an overlooked bug! I didn’t see anyone else mention issue yet.

Thanks for your help!

Wilhelm

Hi ,

There’s currently no way to mark a sprite asset so that all components using it will default to being physically simulated. I’ll add it to list to consider. Creating a Blueprint that contains a sprite component and setting it on component there should be way to go, so I’m not sure why you can’t enable simulate on it. It certainly seems like a bug, although I’m seeing same behavior on both SpriteComponent and StaticMeshComponent: I cannot edit bSimulatePhysics on either in Blueprint Components mode. I’ll ask around to see if anyone else knows why.

Cheers,

[Michael_Noland]

@Boushiya;93571

Hello Everyone.

I’m currently fiddling around with menus and a top-down style of game-play using Paper 2D and free-moving mouse input, however I’m having trouble trying to figure out how to get hit-traces and OnClicked events to work for PaperSprites.
As far as I know, it’s set up correctly and sprite is using 3D Physics as Collision. traces and click events work fine on any random brush I drag into scene, but not sprites.
Am I missing something, is it not implemented yet, or is there a different way of doing ?

Hi Boushiya,

Traces should be working fine against sprites. I just verified in release version of 4.3 using side scroller template that a regular in-plane trace will work correctly for sprites (see attached image). I’ll give finger touch events a go next, since that requires a bit more setup with PlayerController, etc…

Cheers,

[anonymous_user_a36a29c6]

@;97958

It’s not really safe / possible in a cooked build. All of geometry manipulation code is editor-only right now. You could adjust raw ‘cooked’ FVector4 data and recreate render proxies each frame but it wouldn’t be very performant. Instead, I’d recommend either animating scale of component (if you just want sprite to stretch/squash) or making a custom material for anything more complicated. You can use full material pipeline of Unreal to do crazy complicated things on a sprite.

I’d be interested in specific use cases though, it would certainly be possible to add a kind of sprite component that lets you dynamically adjust geometry if there is enough interest, ala CustomMeshComponent for 3D meshes.

Cheers,

shape I’m trying to manipulate in question is a circle, so stretching won’t work for me. I tried manipulating UVs in a Material but I can’t really do that reliably to create effect I want. I’ll keep messing with it though, thanks.

[Michael_Noland]

@;97972

Hi Boushiya,

Traces should be working fine against sprites. I just verified in release version of 4.3 using side scroller template that a regular in-plane trace will work correctly for sprites (see attached image). I’ll give finger touch events a go next, since that requires a bit more setup with PlayerController, etc…

Hi Boushiya,

Mouse/finger touch trace events appear to work correctly in 4.3 as well; I’ve posted my setup in attached image in case that’s useful to you. As before, I started with 2D side scroller template, and it makes placed instances of platform BP change color when touched.

Cheers,

[LATEXXJUGGERNUT]

@;22480

2D collision/physics, terrain splines, atlasing groups, and tile maps are Experimental (hidden behind enable flags where possible)

Wait… do you have player spline collision/physics… like a player going along a spline path on x & y?

[Michael_Noland]

@LATEXXJUGGERNUT;98085

Wait… do you have player spline collision/physics… like a player going along a spline path on x & y?

Paper terrain spline components don’t generate any collision at all right now. You could use a generic USplineComponent as a path for a sprite or something else (e.g., making a complex path for a moving platform), and as long as you do MoveComponent with bSweep=true when positioning component to somewhere along spline, it would sweep and stop if there were collisions along way.

Cheers,

[anonymous_user_21a58d97]

Hello to everyone!
I am currently only interested in 2d game creation.
Why am i using a 3d engine for then?
Because all 2d engines i have used they either seriously underperform or they can not publish to any major platforms.
A couple of weeks ago i switched to Unity with Playmaker and although it was a pain to work with i was able to have a functional prototype with my main character performing all of his moves within days.
But once again when i realized that a third party will probably not work everywhere and i will have compatibility issues i started looking for alternatives.
So i decided to try out Unreal engine because visual scripting is part of engine ( i am an artist and i suck at programming) and fact that it now supports sprites and 2d in general.

I will not lie.I am overwhelmed with Unreal’s 2D workflow!
I have spend half i day watching 2 tutorials that are 3 months old and what i realised was that i am screwed.
I have 10 characters(for time being) with my main character having 17 animations. with 40 png’s each.
If i follow tutorials way of importing sprites i will will probably end up in looney bin! And mr. will be held responsible!

After some searching around i saw 4.3 release notes saying that i could use a format from Texture packer to import all my pngs as separate animations.
How?Where? What settings should i choose within texture packer?Where do i import that file?

Please forgive my ignorance since i am new here and i might be missing something but i think we need a better explanation of how Unreal 2D works.
If above tutorials i mentioned are still valid then whole 2D workflow is most unintuitive thing i have ever worked with and everything needs a major revamp.

To be honest i find using Png’s archaic since most of other game engines support importing from skeletal animation software. (Spriter,Spine etc).
For example in Unity i just dragged and dropped my tweening animations(from spriter) and it created automatically all bones ,Pngs and animations.
quality of real time in game tweening versus flipping Png’s is HUGE.And it took me 5 minutes to import everything!

So i would love to see Unreal reach out to these guys and persuade them to create a drag and drop plug in for your engine.
If you seriously want to support 2D then i believe that is a path that you should follow.2d is SO much different from 3D regarding assets and artwork.

Closing i would be grateful if someone showed me in right direction so i can start creating my game (again! LOL) in wonderful engine.I am literally frozen in idea that i have to do all work just to import my assets.I dont even want to think what will happen when i try to import my tilemaps.And just thought that i might need to change a frame of an animation down road gives me nightmares…
Please mr.noland, tell me there is a better and more efficient way to import and manage our assets so we can
start creating 2D games in Unreal.
Thank you!

[Michael_Noland]

Hi ,

We certainly want to support direct importing of content from Spine and similar tools in future, but right now only animation format for 2D stuff are flipbooks.

format is same as exported from Adobe Flash CS6 or similar, which also matches format that Texture Packer exports if you pick ‘Unity’ option, although it names extension as .txt instead of . (you’ll have to rename it before it can be imported). We’re planning on having a template for Texture Packer released with 4.4, which will avoid need to rename file.

If your existing assets follow a regular naming convention or you have data in a scriptable environment, you ought to be able to generate a . file describing them to do a bulk import operation too.

Here’s rough format of supported import:

{"frames": {
"Symbol 2 instance 10000":
{
	"frame": {"x":0,"y":0,"w":67,"h":92},
	"rotated": false,
	"trimmed": true,
	"spriteSourceSize": {"x":4,"y":5,"w":73,"h":97},
	"sourceSize": {"w":73,"h":97}
},
"Symbol 2 instance 10001":
{
	"frame": {"x":67,"y":0,"w":66,"h":93},
	"rotated": false,
	"trimmed": true,
	"spriteSourceSize": {"x":5,"y":4,"w":73,"h":97},
	"sourceSize": {"w":73,"h":97}
}},
"meta": {
	"app": "Adobe Flash CS6",
	"version": "12.0.2.529",
	"image": "p1_walk.png",
	"format": "RGBA8888",
	"size": {"w":256,"h":512},
	"scale": "1"
}
}

RE: Tilemaps: I’m planning on making an importer that works with tile maps exported from Tiled (http://www.mapeditor.org/), but as of 4.3 tile maps are still pretty experimental. In any event, you won’t have to make a separate asset for each individual tile, there is a tile set asset that covers all tiles in a given texture.

[edit]
Also wanted to mention that we plan on significantly improving workflow in editor for both splitting up imported spritesheets as well as flipbooks. current tools are ‘early access’ precisely because they’re not yet where we want them to be.
[/edit]

You can also bulk import, dragging and dropping a bunch of separate textures at once into editor, and then right click while they’re all selected to “Create Sprite” for all of them at once. You could then drag-drop a bunch of selected sprites at once into a flipbook timeline to add them as keyframes.

Cheers,

[anonymous_user_21a58d97]

Thank you for your answer.It saved me a lot of tedious work.
Let me ask another workflow question.
I need to change pivot point of my sprites.I didn’t find anywhere a batch pivot point change. Must i do manually for 700 sprites

[Michael_Noland]

@;99278

Thank you for your answer.It saved me a lot of tedious work.
Let me ask another workflow question.
I need to change pivot point of my sprites.I didn’t find anywhere a batch pivot point change. Must i do manually for 700 sprites

Select all of sprites in content browser and right click. Select property matrix option. will allow you to bulk edit properties on any assets in Unreal.

Cheers,

[Michael_Noland]

@;97967

Hi ,

There’s currently no way to mark a sprite asset so that all components using it will default to being physically simulated. I’ll add it to list to consider. Creating a Blueprint that contains a sprite component and setting it on component there should be way to go, so I’m not sure why you can’t enable simulate on it. It certainly seems like a bug, although I’m seeing same behavior on both SpriteComponent and StaticMeshComponent: I cannot edit bSimulatePhysics on either in Blueprint Components mode. I’ll ask around to see if anyone else knows why.

Turns out my test was flawed, static mesh I grabbed had no collision at all. I’ve checked in a fix for not being able to edit bSimulatePhysics on components in Blueprints in commit /EpicGames/UnrealEngine/commit/683a74d34e8d9c8dac826aff94f1b585152ff096 which will be part of 4.4.

Another cool feature that went into main recently is LockedAxis property under Physics category. You can set to Y on sprites with 3D collision that you want to have simulation on, in order to prevent them from rotating out of plane.

Cheers,

[anonymous_user_a36a29c6]

Here is a gradient health bar material I made using sprites… sprite is just used to define shape of health bar.

I’m pretty new to Materials and Shaders in general so not sure if was most ‘optimized’ way to do .

[Kinekon]

Hi !

First off I want to thank you and rest of team for hard work, dedication, and clear communication with community. In world of today it is very much needed, but you guys stand out amongst rest!

Here’s my deal. I’m using paper2d and loving it, especially after 4.3. I just have one dilemma. I can’t figure out how to trigger an attack animation in blueprint. I have it set to my f key, and when I press F it gives some weird graphic glitch that is barely noticeable. i am using 2d sidescroller blueprint, though I’ve gotten far on my own without it. Obviously with being so new, there are not a lot of information on and if there is any at all I cannot find it! What would be best way to set up?

[anonymous_user_a36a29c6]

@;85659

Animation is still pretty early. Right now you can only swap sprites in a flipbook, and play one of those back. However, sprites and flipbook players are regular components, so all of general Unreal features work same way on them as they do on 3D stuff. You can use matinee to keyframe things, a Timeline in a BP to rotate/scale/etc… things, or arbitrary math in a BP or C++ code. In future, we may grow what can be done inside of Flipbook editor, or create a different kind of animated sprite that has more skeletal anim-like features, but nothing is set in stone yet.

Cheers,

Hey , I tried using Timeline to edit Sprite Color to make a sprite fade. It appears doesn’t work properly though, as color delays updating until near time line as if there was a lag, and either way, result isn’t a fade, more like a flash out.

I attached an image of print below on how I’m trying to do . Is there another or better way to do implement a fade?

[anonymous_user_a36a29c6]

@;99996

Hey , I tried using Timeline to edit Sprite Color to make a sprite fade. It appears doesn’t work properly though, as color delays updating until near time line as if there was a lag, and either way, result isn’t a fade, more like a flash out.

I attached an image of print below on how I’m trying to do . Is there another or better way to do implement a fade?

I copied default sprite material and set it to translucent, overrode default one, and fixed it. Works magically now!

[HavocX]

Is there any support for lit sprites and flip books with additional maps, for example normals? If not, is it a planned feature? We are making a game that depends on for both sprites and flip books and are getting a bit worried.

[anonymous_user_a36a29c6]

@HavocX;100479

Is there any support for lit sprites and flip books with additional maps, for example normals? If not, is it a planned feature? We are making a game that depends on for both sprites and flip books and are getting a bit worried.

I did notice some additional materials you can choose from besides ‘Default’ one for Sprites…some of them have ‘lit’ in their description, but I haven’t tested them.

[HavocX]

@;100483

I did notice some additional materials you can choose from besides ‘Default’ one for Sprites…some of them have ‘lit’ in their description, but I haven’t tested them.

None of them use more than one texture/map.

[dokipen (Dan 'dokipen' Elliott)]

@;98453

Closing i would be grateful if someone showed me in right direction so i can start creating my game (again! LOL) in wonderful engine.I am literally frozen in idea that i have to do all work just to import my assets.I dont even want to think what will happen when i try to import my tilemaps.And just thought that i might need to change a frame of an animation down road gives me nightmares…
Please mr.noland, tell me there is a better and more efficient way to import and manage our assets so we can
start creating 2D games in Unreal.
Thank you!

Hi

I created some getting started tutorials for paper2d here. It should show you most of basics.

https://www…com/VXXY09MHmkQPLHadbgEqCTxBiXOQVH6oR7Xbcvv1uwUZy

[anonymous_user_21a58d97]

Thank you Mr .
I will watch them afternoon and post back with any question i might have.
To be honest i have come a long way since my last post and now my player is currently running,jumping,falling being idle and i just added shield animation as well.
Up to point i am not having any troubles with logic behind all these movements and animations since i already have done twice in past,one in construct 2 and one in Unity.
only problems i am having in Unreal is lack of documentation and examples in Paper2D since i guess it just only started.
I am wasting hours in trying to figure out even simplest of tasks.

For example i was looking inside flipbook for a “covert to all pivot points”.
If it wasn’t for mr.Noland to tell me that exists under properties matrix i would have spend one day clicking one by one pivot points!
Why it is not inside flipbooks editor is beyond me but we are in beta so i guess i have to be patient.
I posted a question in question hub on how to get Y velocity so i know when my player is jumping and when he is falling and i received no answers.
If i had asked how to implement tressFx hair movement in c++ i would have probably gotten 30 answers!
It appears that in Unreal Y axis is Z axis when jumping… How on earth could i know that.
Now i am stuck in one simple thing.

When my player “Is_Shield” he plays an animation (Shield Equip) and i want second animation ends to play (Shield Idle).
is probably a 2 second job and i am stuck here for an hour trying to find in forums a command in lines of"on animation finished" play animation but with no success.
Any help on would be greatly appreciated.