Suggetion: Atlas Features Improvement- Add Sprite/Image from a Folder

[NewDefoldUser]

Atlas Feature can improve the time in the development, if Defold engine allow to choose a folder too, because, in Defold 2.0, I must select sprite by sprite, but this way it is a rework, because first I must make/buy the sprites/imagens, then organize in a folders, and then select all I want from the Atlas list screen, and the list can be huge, so waste of time if you have a lot of assets. But if the Atlas list screen I could select my folder called e.x. Environment and just click in OK, is lot of fast, and Don’t Repeat Yourself.

[Pawel]

Hmm, you can always select a bunch of sprites in Select Images window - just filter by the name of your folder and select images holding Shift for a list or Ctrl for a specific image. (If you filter by the main folder name, all the child catalogs will be displayed too, so you can choose them as well)

[Alex_8BitSkull]

I’m not certain about the specific suggestions on offer here, but for sure I am also spending time setting up atlases.

In my use case, I (currently) have about 50 enemies. In my isometric game, each character has a set of animations (e.g. “idle”, “walking”, “attacking”, “dying”, etc). Multiply that by 4 to handle the directions (SW, SE, NW, NE), and all of a sudden it’s a big job to set up the animations.

The fastest way I’ve found is opening an old similarly structured atlas in a text editor and doing some search & replace to edit in new filenames. That only works where there’s the same number of frames, which of course is rare…

I don’t know what the solution is, just saying it can be a pain point.

[Pawel]

Ok, I get it, then I think that creating an atlas out of the catalogs structure could be convenient - so that could be a feature Anyway, you can still create tilemaps which would be more convenient to create many animations after just one upload from the disk

[Mathias_Westerdahl]

I definitely think we need to look into the atlas editing.
Your use cases are a good example, but also we’ll (hopefully) soon will be able to work on our multitexturing feature again, which also poses this workflow question.
It’s still in our roadmap

[NewDefoldUser]

Thank you @Mathias_Westerdahl to considering the idea.

[Mattias_Hedberg]

It have also been requested before

Add Folder of Images in a Atlas | SmartFolders (DEF-2150)

I think it would be handy if you could add folder with a lot image into a Atlas and they get referenced into it without actually “being” there. Working as a SmartFolder does in TexturePacker, using SmartFolders with Atlases could decrease the merge conflicts and is a nice quality of life feature, as you don’t have to add every single image into an atlas, decreasing the steps you have need to input a image into the game.