Sprite DLight - Instant normal maps for 2D graphics

Ooh, that's a rather good-looking effect, I do believe!

Good luck with your crowdfunding campaign! ^_^

I was showing this to some people in the chatroom when your kickstarter went up! Looks good :)

If you haven't seen it already, there's another tool called "sprite lamp" that was also successfully crowdfunded, but yours has a much simpler workflow; Sprite Lamp requires you to draw each sprite as least two times, each using a different lighting direction, and then generates normals based on those example lighting profiles.

Thank you

Yes, I know Sprite Lamp, I have backed it, and I think it is very cool, just like its creator, who did a lot of awesome work and prepared the ground for 2D normal mapping integration with various engines (which is something Sprite DLight users will also benefit from).
Both tools just serve different purposes. With Sprite Lamp, you have more artistic control and you can achieve a better quality if you take the time to paint everything nicely.
Sprite DLight is targeted to projects with larger numbers of sprites, where you just don't have the time to draw everything by hand.
Think of animated characters. You would just process the sprite sheet in one click, resulting in quick normal maps that are all calculated with the same settings.

that is rather amazing!

Good look with your kickstarter, and if I am ever interested in 2D game dev, I would certainly give this tool a try.

Pretty interesting. I'd be interested in seeing how it looks with some animated sprites myself.

Ethanon Engine implement that technique and looks great.

@TooLz: As long as there is no demo available to play with, you can send me some of your sprites and I can see what the tool produces for them.

@augus1990: Yes, Ethanon Engine is a great piece of software and it was one of the first engines to implement this technique. I love it!

A small update on the Kickstarter campaign:
We have just reached the second stretch goal. That means Sprite DLight will also be available for Mac.
This is a screenshot of the first Mac test build:

Fantastic -- I backed this a week or two ago, great to see progress being made -- thanks for sharing with us! :)

I think this is amazing, dont get me wrong, but they seem metalic... is it just me?

Thank YOU for backing, jbadams

riuthamus, the intensity of the specularity map cannot yet be set for the lighting preview, that's why it looks a bit metallic.

Ah, thank you for the response.

If you're doing specular lighting in those previews, then doing monochromatic specular (e.g. use a constant like 0.1 or 'dot(colour,(float3)1/3.0)' instead of 'colour') then the surfaces will look more like insulators than metals.

Nabbed the last early-bird (DLight Lite).

Hodgman, actually the (monochromatic) specularity factor, based on the specularity map, is added to the ambient light (of customizable colors and intensities) at this time.
This is probably not how it should be done, I will look into a proper implementation.

Servant of the Lord, congratulations on that, and thanks for backing

A short update:

The third stretch goal has been hit today and the project exceeded 400% funding.

The new feature allows you to re-render sprites for different environments or day and night cycles, based on the generated normal map.
This enables users of game engines that do not support shaders to customize the lighting of characters and objects, resulting in an atmospheric integration.


"Super Aged Warriors Alpha 2 HD Turbo Special", ©2014 AlbertoV (DYA Games), re-rendered for different environments with the normal map and lighting of Sprite DLight

Four ambient light colors and a directional light can be applied, and users of the Pro version will be able to use this with batch-processing.
The diffuse light is reduced to its directional component, allowing for consistent re-lighting of sprite sheets.


"Wolf where?", ©2014 Kevin Chaloux, re-rendered for different environments with the normal map and lighting of Sprite DLight

The final week of the Kickstarter campaign is running and the final stretch goal is smashed:

I am currently redesigning the UI, the flat buttons are gone, there's some shiny new orbs for the map generation tabs:

Any feedback is welcome.

There's 6 days left to grab the tool at the Kickstarter backer price and to jump in for the beta.