Sprite DLight beta build 0.5 released!

Sprite DLight 0.5 brings lots of great changes and fixes! 

The Sprite tab now has a new button that allows you to load an external sprite to be displayed with the currently used Normal Map. 

 

Merging new normal map after manual removal of the shadow through editing of the Light Maps. Using the original Sprite as the "External Texture" to be displayed with the new Normal Map.
Original sprite: "Blacksmith" ©2015 AlbertoV (www.dyagames.com)

The Specularity tab got another slider: You can now change the overall brightness of the Specularity Map. Another addition requested by some of you: the option to click the number values of the sliders and change them by entering a number.

 

Clickable slider values: Enter a number for the new Specularity Map brightness slider manually!
Original sprite: "Blacksmith" ©2015 AlbertoV (www.dyagames.com)

The full list of changes (including simultaneously zoomable Light Map preview pictures and many more enhancements and fixes) will be sent out to all backers together with the download link, and it is also available in the Announcements section of the Sprite DLight Forum.

This is just a short summary of Sprite DLight Update #25 on Kickstarter!

Unity 2D dynamic lighting tutorial with custom Sprite DLight shader

A new tutorial on normal map integration with Unity! 

While integrating dynamic lighting in a 2D game with Sprite DLight's normal maps, Unity users have reported several issues with the built-in materials and shaders.  

With the new custom Sprite DLight shader and a step-by-step tutorial for beginners and advanced Unity users, anyone should now be able to easily improve their 2D game with normal maps.
Danilo Ganzella, backer of Sprite DLight and Game Designer of the game “Tower of Samsara” , wrote the custom shader and the tutorial, which covers all the basics from generating sprite sheets and normal maps to bringing everything together in Unity.  

 

For the full tutorial, please see Sprite DLight Update #24 on Kickstarter!

Sprite DLight beta build 0.4 released!

Sprite DLight 0.4 brings awesome features and fixes! 

The zoom feature that has been there in the very first beta build of Sprite DLight had been removed due to issues with other new features. 
Now it is back in all of its glory, waiting for you to go crazy on the mouse wheel.

 

Mouse-wheel zoom is now supported again. Original sprite from "Tower of Samsara" ©2015 Guilherme Gaspar (www.towerofsamsara.com)

Another neat new feature is the "Detail Focus" option, which allows you to choose between local luminance and lightness differences as the main source for the surface details recognition algorithm. In some cases, changing this option does make a huge difference, especially when your sprite has vibrant color contrasts.

 

You can now choose local lightness or luminance differences as the source for the surface recognition algorithm

The full list of changes (including support for new image file formats, subfolder batch processing, smart and quicker map calculation and a progress bar and many more fixes and improvements) will be sent out to all backers together with the download link, and it will be also published in the Sprite DLight Forum.

This is just a short summary of Sprite DLight Update #23 on Kickstarter!

Sprite DLight Forum now online!

The Sprite DLight Forum has been launched!  

Finally, there is a place for the Sprite DLight Community: the Sprite DLight Forum.
has been launched today.

 

Let the Sprite DLight Community come to life, create an account and 

• request new features for the software 
• find help for the game engine you are working with 
• post bug reports and other problems you encounter 
• show off your awesome work 
• get an idea of what to expect in the next build 

Thank you for registering!

Spine and dynamic lighting: Project MageLight!  

Some might already be aware of the great things happening in the Spine Forum at Esoteric Software but I'd still like to give a shoutout to Mitch, who has done a lot of work pushing the Spine-Unity Runtimes and doing tutorials for them. 
Together with Alex Dixon, who has done all the shader work, Mitch has been working on Project MageLight, an example project for the Spine Runtimes, that brings together skeletal animation and dynamic lighting with normal maps.

The breathtaking example shows a scene with two colored light sources and two animated characters. 

The normal maps for the characters have been authored with Sprite DLight, with some alterations made afterwards.
It can be viewed in your browser, you only need the Unity browser plugin.

This is just a short summary of Sprite DLight Update #22 on Kickstarter!

Sprite DLight Upgrade now available!

Lite version can now be upgraded to Pro!

Backers of the Lite version, regardless of whether you pledged via Kickstarter or PayPal, can now upgrade their pledge to the Pro version here!

The price for this upgrade, at the time of this update, is $15.00, but it may increase at some point in the future.

The benefits of backing the project via PayPal are the same as on Kickstarter: backers receive updates and download links (directly via email), a standalone version of the tool on release and a Steam key when it is available on Steam. 

This is just a short summary of Sprite DLight Update #21 on Kickstarter!

Third Sprite DLight beta build released!

Sprite DLight 0.3 brings new features and bug fixes  

Apart from some technical changes and fixes'behind the scenes', 0.3 brings some new features and backer-suggested improvements like the change to the sprite sheet animation preview, that allows the user to specify starting and ending frame numbers instead of just a total number of animation frames.
This change allows you to easily preview animation sequences within a larger sprite sheet.

 

The sprite sheet animation preview can now be displayed 'from frame X to frame Y'

Thanks to everybody who made suggestions for changes and new features, as well as everybody who reported bugs and issues.
Some of the suggested improvements didn't make it into 0.3, but most of them will be addressed in the future.

The current beta build also brings a new Pro feature: an option to export the dynamic lighting preview as a sequence of images!

In the meantime, the Sprite DLight forum is well underway, it should be live within the next few weeks, so the Sprite DLight community will hopefully come to life soon.

This is just a short summary of Sprite DLight Update #20 on Kickstarter!

Finally green light for Sprite DLight!

Sprite DLight just got greenlit!

Awesome news, everyone: Sprite DLight has just been greenlit by the Steam community!

This is what I just saw when checking the current stats (which I did several times a day):

That means the tool will be available on Steam when it is done, and backers of the Lite and Pro versions will receive a Steam key for each license they acquired, in addition to a download link to the final product.

These news are very exciting and I would like to thank everyone who voted and/or helped to spread the word to make it possible.

This is just a short summary of Sprite DLight Update #19 on Kickstarter!