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?

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 butt, 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?

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
Rotating




Scale (zoomed for better view)


Video Demo



DOWNLOAD here: http://info.sonicretro.org/RotSprite
Alternate host: http://www.sendspace.com/file/xdoeyq

[ulisan]

Thanks for share this awesome tol, dude! 

 Even PS can screw some pixels when rotate

[Hellzone]

Great Find. 

[ExeLord]

Looks useful, thanks, will give it a try

[Excahm]

Indeed....

[dan_aracena]

EXELENT .:O:. ..... YOU CAN'T EVEN IMAGINE HOW HELPFULL THIS IS TO ME .... Right now i am working on Krypto WIP, but i decided to create the sprites from draws and original images (to make it unique) .... But my problem was exactly this one, from one draw i needed to get: head, cape, tail, legs, etc etc, part by part ... and rotate and join them again to create new sprites ..... and with Paint Shop pro the result its a mess .......

Well .... THANKS A LOT MAN!!!!!! 

(I tested it .... amazing results!!! ...)

[laspacho]

Nice, I'll have to try this out.  This could be very useful.

[.Batzarro.]

I thought this tool was already well known, been using it since I can remember. Forgot who linked me to it originally but was out in the open.

[O Ilusionista]

Not, it wasn't. There are two topics (one here and one at MFG) but both wasn't showing everything the tool could offer, plus the topics tittles was very generic.

Something so cool need to have a more explicit tittle

[DEMONKAI]

Yeh i had this for a hot while now...the old old CVG mugen site had it up at the time a year ago er so...
that sh*t is a great tool..ived used it on my wip numerous times and it doesnt jack up your sprite when it does it

I believe all spriters and creators should have it in the stash

[Rage]

  useful indeed

[Beto]

Isso pode facilitar muito minha vida em breve

[Tha Lando ( Le CROM )]

Yeh i had this for a hot while now...the old old CVG mugen site had it up at the time a year ago er so...
that sh*t is a great tool..ived used it on my wip numerous times and it doesnt jack up your sprite when it does it

I believe all spriters and creators should have it in the stash

hey is this the same program you told me about last year ? if so i think i never got to get it but i totally forgot the name of it. 

Now i see the deeper explanation of it Big O , i can now see i have needed this tool for a long dang time! now i can actually resize some sprite rips i have to be what i need and finally rotate crap the way i need! Thanx for the link and i am gonna bookmark this page up soi can see i do that resize right.   


ok Kai, you can smack me in the back of the head and say...I TOLD YOU SO!

[altoiddealer]

THANKS!!! 

I'm logged in and for some reason it still wouldn't show the link 

I did a Google search and found it of course... but also came across a program that the developer claimed to produce even better results: SolarStrings Sprite Rotater

[O Ilusionista]

hum, you mean this? https://github.com/salmonmoose/SpriteRotator
The results are great too



nice find!

[nedflandeurse]

Thanks for speading it Ilu, Since I'm to lazy to do it

Hope it will help all of you to make sprite work far easier.

This is an exemple of the kind of edit I've done in the past weeks.
When upscalling, I highly recomand you to edit small details like face to have descent results.

[O Ilusionista]

Thanks for the video, Princess.

[Rage]

Thanks for the video, Princess.

What Olu is saying is the first post was updated with a demo video