What tools are best used to create 2d graphics and animations for unity?
You need to make 2D graphics for the game under unity.
The question arose, which tool is best suited for this. Of course, to draw the sprites themselves, use Photoshop (probably). But for animation, I break my head, I do not catch the essence.
As I understand it, for 2D games, they use mainly frame-by-frame animation, which, in turn, is done in three ways: either all sprites are drawn manually (as I understand it is popular in pixel art), or using tools for dragging layers of individual parts of the character (there the leg will be twisted, there the hand will be brought, and the type of gait turned out), or fully with the help of skeletal animation, which functions perfectly, but the ofc is more difficult, because you still need to configure all the keys, but you can do a lot of animation at the output and quickly.
Here I can't understand:
- What should I choose? In theory, it all depends on how much I want to use the graphics in the game. If there is no animation a little bit, then it is enough to make sprites frame-by-frame manually. And if I want to do a lot of animation, and high-quality, it is better to use the method of skeletal animation, right?
- Why can't skeletal animation be fully used in the game? Why do they only do frame-by-frame cutting, because the animation is not so perfect? The question is in resource costs? How big is the difference? Or is skeletal animation in 3D games also kind of frame-by-frame? With the understanding of this question I have problem(((
- Let's say I want to work out my character with a lot of animation, so I choose a skeletal one, so that it turns out well. What is the best tool for this?
I understand that programs for 3D modeling are also great for 2D . The same Blender, 3DMax, cinema 4D, maya or cool and expensive programs specifically for 2D animation - spine and anime studio/ What are the main criteria used to select a tool for creating 2D animations?
And again, it seems like in Unity itself, you can also do the same frame-by-frame skeletal animation using mecanim (only I haven't yet realized that you can do bones directly in it, or you must port the model from 3D editors). So why use other programs if you can get by with the tools in Unity?
Plus there are paid assets on the same Unity for skeletal animation.
What to choose? 2 day Google swarm and in the ru segment of information about this is quite straight even little.
2 answers
The answer to your question is to use sprite animation. It is more flexible for such purposes and allows binding of a skeletal implementation. The animation is best set in Unity itself, and it is convenient in it that each animation is saved by a separate action. That is, in the future it can be used in different situations. I do not recommend using third-party tools when creating animated 2D elements, because if something goes wrong, you will not find the end and you will still come to a variant of sprite animation. UPD: I transferred an animated element from Blender, 3Ds Max, Cinema 4D, and in all cases the element was not transferred efficiently, either animations, textures, or something else did not work, so I advise you to simply transfer models and sprites in parts, without animation, so that in the future Unity means to give the desired effect.
Try out the beautiful Anima2D tool, which is promoted by Unity itself. in fact, the same Spine and DragonBones(the Chinese equivalent of Spine), only inside the Unity environment, i.e. nothing needs to be imported anywhere, thus everything will remain in its original form.
Lessons: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwx1hYGfxqUxe8--NbboYmqA6OFhOE34R
Asset: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/79840