Game engine export additional options

Hi, I think Sprite Sheets export is a really great Harmony feature, but I think it would benefit from additional options.

  • For me, the most important one would be the ability to export not only the Line and Color Art Layers, but also the Overlay and Underlay, ideally I should be able to configure which layers I'd want exported
  • Adding effects to the exported images, maybe an option to pack a group of layers into one single image
  • I know Harmony exports an XML file I can open and read, but if I don't use Unity as an engine I'd have to write the code necessary to execute it. Have you considered using an animation format more broadly used? like Spine XML or FBX or Collada DAE? I understand this could lead to licensing issues (in order to use the Spine Runtimes you have to buy a Spine license), but still, this might prove useful to a lot of people. Right now I work with Unreal Engine, and exporting the animation means using Spine to assemble the animation again before exporting to the engine.

I think Harmony has a lot of potential to be used in Game Developing, I think that, with the growing game industry, this potential should be further explored.

Thank you for reading!

• i also use the overlay and underlay layers for almost any harmony project so it is a shame they don’t export as you are requesting.

• effects for game sprites are a tricky request, i can imagine there are good reasons why they wouldn’t export due to the file rasterizing generation process/pipeline (system expecting to process full frames, etc.). not impossible, but i wouldn’t expect to see support for this in harmony… ever. might just need to be clever about it.

• i doubt you’ll see any spine output/integration, as spine is a direct competitor for generating game assets (and frankly light years ahead of harmony for that purpose). harmony also desperately needs a dynamic mesh warping tool/system on par with spine, even just for general animation (cheap-as-dirt moho has a decent one).

i feel like harmony’s game engine efforts, although now having years of “maturity”, are just a hobby for the development team. i agree that i’d really enjoy being able to depend on harmony for game development more exclusively, as i really like making the artwork in harmony. even now you are really better off just making the art layers in harmony and doing all of your actual animation and rigging elsewhere (spine, unity directly, etc.)

About your second point, I’m not asking a real time implementation of the effects, I’d like them to be “baked”, or rendered. I understand is not realistic to ask for a real time implementation of every single effect, but I’d like to see my work as close as I see it in the ToonBoom render once in the game without having to deal with a lot of intermediate steps (render to a Write Node as transparent png, cut, rename, reorganize, etc).

I also doubt they’re going to even consider a Spine implementation, I think they should see Spine not as a competition but as an opportunity to expand their users in the game Industry. Anyway, I know it’s a very long shot, but one can only dream XD .

I understand If Harmony is not going to take seriously the game engine export features since it’s not their main focus, but at least they should offer more options to the people who work in the industry, like easier and more robust exporting. Even something like the support Affinity Designer offers to Spine users would be a huge improvement (you can export a JSON file with all the layers organized that you can open in Spine, so half of the organizing work is already done).

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

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thanks for the tip about affinity, i didn’t know that. neato!