Automatic Sprite Shading

Abstract

Sprites have been present since the first arcade games and console generations. Despite the advances in computer graphics and the whole representation of virtual worlds on 3D environments, 2D-based games still have their space, specially on portable consoles and mobile devices. The visual quality of sprites have increased as a result of hardware improvements in processing power, memory, and a richer color gamut. However, most of the sprite editing task is still manual, using graphics editing tools. We present a method to automatically generate shading distribution on sprites, one important step during the editing process that is time demanding for most manual works on art design today. Our method allows to control the position of a local light source and to generate an approximation of shading distribution effect on sprites. Although our solution is not physically accurate according to the shape of the represented object, it can produce convincing and well usable results for 2D game systems in many practical cases. We compare our fully automatic results with handmade sprite shading, with very convincing results.