Its ok to mix multiple sizes ? (32x32 with 16x16? )

[brutecold]

I'm new to pixel art and started to make some 32x32 pixel art, but now I have to add some props and that's too big for it, would be ok to add 16x16 props or that would become a problem when you place objects into a game engine? will it be harder to snap to grids? (Unity, gamemaker..)

Sorry I know its a really newbie question I have tried searching for an answer but could not find it, so I hope someone here can help with it.

Thanks

[tsej]

Hey, welcome to the forums!
Sprite sizes do not matter. Especially if you're using modern engines like Unity and GM.
What matters is the resolution of your art. I know, I know. It can be a little confusing at first. I was struggling with the same dilemma!

In engines like Unity, there's an option called "PPU" or "Pixels Per Unit" and setting it to a constant value for all your sprites will take care of it.
Example,
Here, the character and the tile both have the same PPU value, basically Pixels per 1 UNIT of the world.

And here, they have DIFFERENT values, which results in resolution differences

^{The ground tiles belong to gameboy
Also for some reason my old character sprite was destroyed by Unity and had weird color bleeding. That's why I don't use it, it's buggy as hell. (I opened it again after months, just for you!}

The resolution mixing looks horrendous IMO.

As for other engines, it shouldn't matter as long as you're working on the same resolution. Example - You can have a 32x32 character and have 16x16 tiles (Which actually worked quite nice for me, and is what I use in the above example)

^{Blue = Character sprite size (32x32), Red = Character hitbox(16x32), Green = world tiles(16x16)}
You see, you have to get out of the "Grid" mentality. Each object is different. Sure, they're on a grid if it's a tileset, but an object can be 64x64, another can be 16x16. Keyword is the resolution. (sorry for repeating this again and again)

Sure, you can go for a completely grid based game but really, I don't see much of a point since if there's a larger sprite you'll have to split it into multiple parts, which is just not needed anymore.

And no need to be shy, we all were complete noobs at one point. I'm sure you'll get this though, it's quite easy once you manage to wrap your head around it. Good luck!

[brutecold]

Thanks tsej!!!

Your post helped a lot, basically I can use any size, and as long as people don't scale things around it will come together nicely

I will make my sprites available to people later so I was worried if people with different workflows and engines would have problems now I can keep working on it without worrying about this lol

[yrizoud]

With tile graphics, you select a size of the smallest "unit" that you want to keep track (ex:16x16), but then it's very normal to have graphics that take more than one tile : a flat wall texture may be 1x1 tile, but a large rocky texture may very well take 2x2 tiles or 2x3 tiles if you don't want it to repeat too quickly. A background tree may take 3x4 tiles.

A good tile engine editor will let you organize your tiles in groups, so that you can paste the tree in one click, rather than find and place the 12 tiles one by one. At the very least, you should be able to create a dummy map which works as a "palette" of the elements that you frequently cut and paste into your real maps.

[brutecold]

yrizoud: That makes a lot of sense, to keep them at the lowest number and have the larger stuff just take on more tiles.
I'm making things a little different right now, but its not hard to make them a different size still.

So Tomorrow I will try both ways and see what works better for it!!!

Thanks for your help!!

__Edit:
Ok so after testing it, I really like this so I'm using now 16x16 tiles for almost everything.
will make bigger ones only for other things like animated characters and stuff like that.

Thanks