A new update for Sprite Studio is out, and this is a large one.
TLDR
- You can now modify palettes directly,
- A new brush has been added that simply allows you to select which artboard to be active without having to modify it,
- Some changes have been made to API,
- Some bugs have been removed, and
- Scripts will be updated shortly.
Overview
Sprite Studio has received its next major update. This adds a new features to the application; you can now modify the palettes directly. This features is used for more advanced control over the colors of your images, and you can do some pretty cool things with this.
With this feature you could draw your subject on the palette, and then reference specific pixels of the palette for your artboards. Then, you can update the appearance of the subject in the palette, and all pixels on artboards which referenced the changed pixels will also be changed (because they look to the palette to know what color to display).
Of course, changing palettes to change images is not new, neither to Sprite Studio nor the rest of graphic design. But the limitation of the old way is that the palette would only store one copy of a particular color value. So all pixels which referenced that color would be changed simultaneously when the one copy on the palette is changed. Now, because you can modify the palette directly, you can put multiple copies of the same color in the palette. Thus, when you create your artboards, you can select which color copy from the palette you want to use for your artboard modification. Then, you can change individual copies of the color in the palette, and only the pixels on artboards that reference that specific copy will be changed.
I'm sure this is a difficult thing to understand, because it's extremely difficult to explain. You will find a link to a YouTube video explaining this concept in much more detail and quality. The video is also very illustrative of how Sprite Studio works in general.
Future of Sprite Studio
There are a few additional features Sprite Studio would need to exit Early Access. I consider those to be:
- Shape (ellipses and rectangles at least) tools
- Line and curve tools
- Text tools
Certainly there are others, but these are, I feel, the most important and missing. I will continue to work toward these features, possibly releasing them all together in one major update, and making the application leave Early Access at the same time, but Sprite Studio will be shifting away from my priority. I plan to begin work on a new, unannounced game which I will be sharing more about when its ready.
Thank you for reading this post. I hope you have found some use out of Sprite Studio, and I hope you will stick with it to see what happens in the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsOKwUwL1bE&list=LL&index=133
