03-30-2010, 03:04 AM
(This post was last modified: 03-30-2010, 02:00 PM by TheouAegis.)
Okay, so I've FINALLY figured out a workable guideline for ripping aircraft in the Strike series, one I'm hoping will apply to all the games.
Aircraft seem to have a pivot pixel -- a little yellow dot of seemingly no other use. However, aligning the sprites according to the pivot pixel would require aligning every frame of the rotors to each frame of the helicopters. As this would be overly tedious as stated in the opening post, I decided to try aligning everything according to the centers of the rotors. In doing so, I noticed the shadows are always aligned with the rotors regardless of the aircraft's pitch or roll. Knowing this, ripping the sprites without the rotors (using my method described in another thread in another subforum here) and with the shadows, it should be safe to sort the sprite sheets by keeping all the shadows in their proper alignment.
Thus, the proper steps for ripping aircraft from the Strike series could be:
1) Save a state.
2) Open state in YYCHR and fill all background tiles with one non-black color.
3) Load the edited state (do not close YYCHR!).
4) Rip one full set (24 frames) of each direction, regardless of pitch or roll.
5) Build a mini-sheet for those 24 frames keeping the rotors in the same relative position.
6) If possible in your graphics program, promote the mini-sheet to a new layer.
7) Go back to YYCHR and fill all tiles for the rotors.
8) Load the revised state and proceed with ripping frames.
9) Paste each new frame into the mini-sheet's file in a new layer and align each frame according to the mini-sheet's shadows
-OR-
Using the mini-sheet as a reference, paste each new frame into a file separate from the mini-sheet and align the shadows properly.
I actually tried something similar once and forgot all about it, but I think this will actually keep everything in proper alignment. This is why even though I'm 99% done with my first sprite sheet (well, 2nd if you count the one above), I still have one more day of work left on it -- I have to realign all 288 frames. >_<;;
Aircraft seem to have a pivot pixel -- a little yellow dot of seemingly no other use. However, aligning the sprites according to the pivot pixel would require aligning every frame of the rotors to each frame of the helicopters. As this would be overly tedious as stated in the opening post, I decided to try aligning everything according to the centers of the rotors. In doing so, I noticed the shadows are always aligned with the rotors regardless of the aircraft's pitch or roll. Knowing this, ripping the sprites without the rotors (using my method described in another thread in another subforum here) and with the shadows, it should be safe to sort the sprite sheets by keeping all the shadows in their proper alignment.
Thus, the proper steps for ripping aircraft from the Strike series could be:
1) Save a state.
2) Open state in YYCHR and fill all background tiles with one non-black color.
3) Load the edited state (do not close YYCHR!).
4) Rip one full set (24 frames) of each direction, regardless of pitch or roll.
5) Build a mini-sheet for those 24 frames keeping the rotors in the same relative position.
6) If possible in your graphics program, promote the mini-sheet to a new layer.
7) Go back to YYCHR and fill all tiles for the rotors.
8) Load the revised state and proceed with ripping frames.
9) Paste each new frame into the mini-sheet's file in a new layer and align each frame according to the mini-sheet's shadows
-OR-
Using the mini-sheet as a reference, paste each new frame into a file separate from the mini-sheet and align the shadows properly.
I actually tried something similar once and forgot all about it, but I think this will actually keep everything in proper alignment. This is why even though I'm 99% done with my first sprite sheet (well, 2nd if you count the one above), I still have one more day of work left on it -- I have to realign all 288 frames. >_<;;