What is the best way to rotate a sprite?

[+Random Terrain]

Visual batari Basic lets you quickly and easily rotate a sprite in 4 directions, but what about those times when you need the other 4 diagonal directions? What is the quickest and easiest way to make the diagonal versions of your sprite? Is there a freeware program or online tool that will automatically rotate an 8-bit sprite 45 degrees?

 

Thanks.

[GroovyBee]

Mspaint.exe can rotate by an angle. Draw a bitmap that matches your graphic, rotate it and then convert it back to binary, hex whatever..

[supercat]

Is there a freeware program or online tool that will automatically rotate an 8-bit sprite 45 degrees?

 

For an 8x8 (or thereabouts) sprite, there's really no alternative to simply drawing the rotated forms yourself. Some tools may be able to do a vaguely-recognizable version of your shape automatically, but getting 90% of the pixels right isn't the hard or time consuming part. What's hard is getting the details to look right.

[+Random Terrain]

Thanks for the replies. I have Paint Shop Pro and Easy GIF Animator which can give me perfect 45 degree views, but trying to duplicate it seems to be impossible. Some shapes just can't be converted to a 45 degree angle without looking like crap no matter what you do.

[jrok]

[jrok]

Thanks for the replies. I have Paint Shop Pro and Easy GIF Animator which can give me perfect 45 degree views, but trying to duplicate it seems to be impossible. Some shapes just can't be converted to a 45 degree angle without looking like crap no matter what you do.

 

In all seriousness, though I think supercat says it best in that there's no really great alternative to hand-drawing if the sprite is any more detailed then a simple shape or line. Even with square pixels, sometimes a 1-to-1 rotation won't look right, and you have to reorganize a few pixels to give the impression that its still the same sprite. This is especially the case when you have a shape with 16 or more angles, I think.

[+Random Terrain]

In all seriousness, though I think supercat says it best in that there's no really great alternative to hand-drawing if the sprite is any more detailed then a simple shape or line. Even with square pixels, sometimes a 1-to-1 rotation won't look right, and you have to reorganize a few pixels to give the impression that its still the same sprite. This is especially the case when you have a shape with 16 or more angles, I think.

The good thing is that most things I make won't need the 45 degree angles. I was just working on an example and couldn't get it to look right, so I gave up and went with a ball type shape with a notch out of it. Hard to mess that up, even for me.