Trimming the Graphics Fat

This thread is a few years old. Some details may refer to an earlier version of Visionaire Studio. Current tutorials

1. Sunday, 11. January 2015, 13:59 · 12 years ago#1

   When Visionaire builds a game for distribution, does it trim graphics down. For instance, when I create a character it often has a lot of alpha around it which I spend a lot of time trimming down so that all of the character's animations will line up. Is it necessary to spend the time doing that or will Visionaire automatically do that when it builds a game? If not, is this a feature that we could request be added to Visionarie as part of the editor? Thanks.
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3. Sunday, 11. January 2015, 14:08 · 12 years ago#2

   Visionaire make an automated trim when the game is being exported.
4. Sunday, 11. January 2015, 14:15 · 12 years ago#3

   Excellent! So I don't have to do that myself in preparing the graphics. Thank you. That makes my life easier.
5. Sunday, 11. January 2015, 16:20 · 12 years ago#4

   Question: The position of the dialog text depends on the border of the alpha box, well? If I use big transparent parts to arrange the text: would Vis make it smaller automatically? The position of the text won't be similar in the final exe-game? And, second: the border has an influence on the character interaction, has it?
   
   Machtnix
6. Sunday, 11. January 2015, 16:34 · 12 years ago#5

   By border, you mean the edges of the image right? No the character center (animation center) you define is what affects the position of the animation.
   
   I'm really not sure what all this trimming the image fat is. But if you have concerns then export a quick test build .exe & see what happens.
7. Sunday, 11. January 2015, 17:07 · 12 years ago#6

   If there is a character with a lot of nothing around him (alpha), the dialog text will be placed at the outside of this border. Sometimes I need a lot of transparency because there could be animations or poses later. In my test game I use a character which hovers under the ceiling, so I have a long transparent box from the floor (where the animation center is) up to the top, where the character is. His dialog text is always on the side, because there isn't any space between up and down.
   
   Machtnix
8. Sunday, 11. January 2015, 17:13 · 12 years ago#7

   You could easily use the registerHookFunction to display text wherever you like. You create some conditions & then query those conditions inside of the hook function. Or better yet, you could create a specific box or black bar type of thing to display all text in, which will make sure all text is displayed correctly.
9. Sunday, 11. January 2015, 17:23 · 12 years ago#8

   Attached is an image of what I mean. I was wondering if I used an image like this with the extra area around it, does visionaire trim the extra pink area off when it comes time to build the game? Of course the pink is just used as a marker. It isn't part of the image. All of that is 100% alpha.

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10. Sunday, 11. January 2015, 17:38 · 12 years ago#9

    I don't see what it matters really. Transparent parts of the image barely increase the file-size by much. Normally a few kb & if you are using .webp image format it will probably be a lot smaller in file-size than the .png version anyway.
    
    You could cut off the image fat (as you are calling it) yourself too, but that would mean that you would have to correctly position each frame, if you used a different canvas size per frame. Personally I use 1 canvas size per animation, as you can always align the animations up later with the animation center &/or the animation studio (harmonizer).
11. Sunday, 11. January 2015, 17:43 · 12 years ago#10

    When it comes time to blit the image to the screen, the computer still has to examine all of that extra image, doesn't it? Wouldn't it be faster to just deal with the image that contains the real image?
    
    I do the same thing. 1 Canvas size for all of my character's animations. However, I was wondering if for performance, Visionaire trimmed the edges off of it.
12. Sunday, 11. January 2015, 17:57 · 12 years ago#11

    “

    
    
    You could cut off the image fat (as you are calling it) yourself too, but that would mean that you would have to correctly position each frame, if you used a different canvas size per frame. Personally I use 1 canvas size per animation, as you can always align the animations up later with the animation center &/or the animation studio (harmonizer).

    „

    
    
    Not shure if it fits here (my weak english] but I load the image sequence as layers in gimp - cut them all in one act and then export the layers again as separate images. You need a little script for this, you can download here. So all images are identically cutted.
    
    This takes about 10 - 20 seconds. But as AFRLme wrote, it doesn't affect the file size as much as I thought.