Rotating and Scaling sprites - the easy way

[O Ilusionista]

This info is so useful that needs to be shared with everyone. Thanks to nedflandeurse for finding this gem.

 

There are some times that we want to scale or rotate sprites to make new ones, and most graphic programs will just ruin the sprites - by blurring then or by messing up the pixels.

 

The solution is a free program called RotSprite, which have unbelievable results.

 

What it is?

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RotSprite is a sprite rotation and scaling utility developed by Xenowhirl. It outperforms most professional graphics software (such as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro) when rotating sprites through an angle other than 90° or one of its multiples. Typically, other graphics editors will apply anti-aliasing or use a primitive nearest-neighbor method when rotating images, which produces results that are ugly or unsuitable for sprites.

 

As Xenowhirl has himself said, this utility has been released because "the walking and running frames in Sonic 1, 2, and 3 all need 45 degree rotated equivalents" and "making rotated versions of sprites is usually a pain in the ass, because most programs that rotate a sprite will antialias it (which blurs it and messes with the colors)". RotSprite uses a special algorithm instead which tries to preserve the original sprite's feature by "guessing" pixel patterns.

 

As an additional feature, RotSprite can also resize sprites (and it does a very good job also for this task).

 

Several major sceners found this utility very useful.

 

How it works?

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The program interface is very simple. You choose which image you will use (accepts many formats), the output name (just outputs BMP) then you will see this:

 

First box: you will enter the angle of the rotation (if you don't want rotation, just put 0). Try to use integer numbers, and remember graphic programs works better in 15º subdivision, so any multiple (15º, 30º, 45º and so on). Remember that is in counter-clockwise, so if you wanna rotate 45 CLOCKWISE, you need to enter 315º or use a negative value (-45º).

 

Second box: Its the scale value. If you doesn't wants a scale, leave it alone (do not use 0). Again, the same 15 multipies will work here, but multiples of 10 will work too. 1.000000 means 1 (normal size), 2.000000 doubles it, 0.500000 half size and so on.

 

Scale down works better than scale up. But the result is better than any other tool.

 

Third box you can enter how much frames do you want, and the final rotation and it will made as much frames as needed.

 

Examples

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Rotating

 

 

Scale (zoomed for better view)

 

DOWNLOAD here: http://info.sonicretro.org/RotSprite

Alternate host: http://www.sendspace.com/file/xdoeyq

[LightFlare_Da_Realest]

That sonic came out golden! That's the best sprite rotation results I've ever seen! Outside of 90 degrees and such.

[Kanbei]

Well I might try this tool out its looks interesting.

[Werewood]

SCALE!!!!!!!!!!!  I need this function!  Thank you O Ilusionista for your awesome find!