
Spritestack – 3D pixelart editor based on sprite stacking technique - keyle
https://spritestack.io/
======
crazygringo
For anyone trying to understand this better, jump to the Help introduction:

[https://spritestack.io/editor/help/#introduction](https://spritestack.io/editor/help/#introduction)

It helps at least a little.

But unfortunately this is yet another site where the home page doesn't seem to
give much context if you're not already part of whatever community it is.
(What's sprite stacking? How is it different for a voxel editor? What need
does this site meet that hasn't been met by other things?)

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rezoner
Thanks! This is exactly a feedback you will not hear from your niche that's
already familiar with the subject. I will improve the landing page.

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joepie91_
Any plans to open-source this? The open-source game development community
desperately needs better tools :)

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feiss
is there not enough tools? what do you miss?

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joepie91_
As far as I know, the available open-source tools that are suitable for
producing pixel art, are strictly flat-2D-only.

Not that you can't do 3D pixel art with them, but they certainly won't help
you get there.

Edit: I just realized that maybe your question is broader than just pixel art.
Open-source game development in general is a very underserved field; in terms
of integrated game development environments, the best option I know of is
Godot, and that's still miles behind a tool like Unity in terms of
capabilities.

Audio production tools aren't great either, none of them integrate
particularly well with the few game development tools that do exist. Good
texture generators are difficult to come by; I believe Blender does have some
functionality to this end, but it's not very accessible.

In terms of 3D modelling, Blender is _decent_ , but suffers from bad UX
(although that's being increasingly fixed, so that's great!).

I'm not aware of any production-ready general-purpose release/infrastructure
tooling existing that's equivalent to something like Steam Workshop.

In short... there are basically almost no good, accessible open-source tools
for game development, no matter what aspect of the process you look at.

~~~
deaddodo
> As far as I know, the available open-source tools that are suitable for
> producing pixel art, are strictly flat-2D-only.

There are plenty of voxel editors out there:

[https://ephtracy.github.io/](https://ephtracy.github.io/)

I'm not sure how "stacked sprites" differ from voxels, since this appears to
be the same technique Westwood used in it's voxel engine; but voxels are the
traditional "3d" pixel art.

~~~
joepie91_
That voxel editor isn't open-source either, though.

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degenerate
Hopping into the editor and throwing down a couple pixels makes sense, but
once I get to the "extrude" part to make it 3D, I don't understand the
controls. It's not intuitive at first play.

I would suggest having the demo editor load a familiar shape, perhaps a house
or a boat, to allow me to modify the object which is already in 3D space. That
might help me understand the controls better (unsure).

~~~
rezoner
Hello there. Thank you for sharing the first experience. I will put example
models in welcome screen. There are also a few very short tutorial videos on
the help screen. [https://spritestack.io/editor/help/#the-
basics](https://spritestack.io/editor/help/#the-basics)

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mistersys
This is cool... accessibility is rather limited though. Appears the only way
to freely rotate is with a middle mouse button my laptop doesn't have.

~~~
aliswe
Look out, you may get replies similar to what I got (another app) when I asked
what mobile users are going to do ... "They can play something else", "what
about apple watch users", "internet connected toaster" ...

Ah, HN. Why ye do not let me delete my account.

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Kiro
This is made by Przemysław Sikorski (Rezoner), pretty famous IO indie game
developer (wilds.io, wanderers.io etc) with a unique art style that's
reflected in this tool.

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VictorSCushman
I learned about this technique from 2kliksphilip [1] early last year. I've
always wanted to use this technique in a game, so I'm excited that there is a
tool for it!

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjFlIxGzABY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjFlIxGzABY)

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wokwokwok
How is this different from any other voxel editor?

It appears to just be a stack of 1 pixel high sprites you draw one at a time,
like a 3D printer might extrude.

...I mean, fair enough, but don’t invent a whole new word for a concept that
already exists unless it’s actually different?

~~~
keyle
In a voxel editor you edit a 3D world using the smallest unit as
cubes/spheres/etc. in 3D space. This is a 2D pixel editor with "stacks" of
sprites.

~~~
snoopen
Isn't the stack then just the third dimension of the original two dimensions?

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Macuyiko
It is, e.g. I think tools like MagicaVoxel can construct a voxel object based
on a stack of sprites, as you describe.

However, not every engine supports 3d models / voxels, so sprite stacking is
commonly used in combination with engines that only support 2d, by simply
drawing each layer on top of the previous one but one pixel higher on the y
axis.

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VikingCoder
Note, stacking pixels is exactly how most volume rendering works.

Source: was an expert in rendering CT and MR data.

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lsalvatore
This is really cool. How can I rotate the figure in order to draw on the back?

~~~
mistersys
There's some hot keys but you need a middle mouse button:
[https://spritestack.io/editor/help/#hotkeys](https://spritestack.io/editor/help/#hotkeys)

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ilaksh
Is there going to be an editor for composing these into a larger map?

~~~
rezoner
Yes although for now my priority is to find a proper way to implement
animations.

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throwaway2016a
Very nice work. I really like it.

The scroll controls are very difficult to use on OSX with a track pad. It
scrolls 3 or 4 levels at once. And I wish it had undo.

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chinchang
Neat tool! Remembered the good old days where I used to make fake 3D in Adobe
Flash using this very technique :)

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viridiansoft
This is cool. Would love to see it as a downloadable standalone app!

~~~
rezoner
I am working on that.

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kawsper
I am missing what formats it supports for exporting.

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feiss
It exports turntable animation gifs and spritesheets in png

