I look at my sprites and unhappy to see too many space wasted by blank space.
If defold can support it, I will be happy 
And one more question - how to split big image to not square atlas (no tileset - images has different sizes)
Thank you.
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Defold has its own texture packer when you add images to an atlas. They have said they wanted to improve it further eventually so it’s more optimized.
You cannot use other texture packers.
Could you rephrase this question?
Look at Unity has in sprite editor: automatic splitting big atlas to smaller sprites with different sizes
How was this big image with varying size sprites created?
I use texture packer with different sizes of images. It crop blank space and pack it effecientlt
Would be great if engine support polygonal sprite.
I wrote about this here TexturePacker support and polygon sprites (DEF-3055)
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Thank you. Good read. I hope see only atlas packer with optimal sprite positioning, nothing more.
But polygonal sprites seems pretty interesting.
I often read on forum about some tools, and not sure, but I think that i read something about “ideology” of engine when developers can use best tool for every small task instead of making every tool into Defold. For example using of the Spine.
But strange thing, when we start talking about texture packing - you always ignore this question. You spend your energy for improvements of your own texture packer (that has basic functions) instead of try to eject(open) options of textures and sprites for all users.
Texture packing - old task in gamedev, and today we have a lot of tools for this.
I think supporting of external tool for texture packing - best investion of your time in this direction.
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But one remark, I talk only about give possibility to use external tool, not about removing current editor tool.
Current Defold instrument really comfortable for development (fast sprite replacing etc)
But if you add support of external tool, you can work on new features into engine independ of the editor features. (For example supporting of smart trim in engine, but editor still can works as is. When you will have time tou will add this function to your texture packer into editor)
Texture Packer has fully costomizible export format https://www.codeandweb.com/texturepacker/documentation
You can make any format that would be comfortable to use into engine.
2 Likes
I like the texture packer from Defold. It enforces the good habit of always creating an atlas so the performance is always top notch. I guess it also uses the texture profiles when bundling so that’s more of a plus.
An external texture packer doesn’t bring much benefits to my use cases. Perhaps internally the Defold texture packer is an open source library or perhaps is in house. What I feel matters the most is the flow of the textures through the pipeline and when the use of an external tool might screw up with texture profiles, the resource counting and add some unwanted complexity.
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Texture profiles is just post processing.
If we have png texture we can make same post processing.
Main benefit is possibility to implement some sprite features (smart trim, polygonal sprite etc) without creation tools into engine (packaging of polygonal sprites not a trivial task, for example)
In small projects - yes, it doesn’t matter. But in big project where need to count every mb of memory it can be serious benefit.