How can I export multiple spritesheets at once?

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1

I have an Aseprite file with a bunch of different animated separated with tags in it. I want to export each tag as a separate png spritesheet. However, I can only seem to make it export as a single spritesheet with each tag separated on a new row, which isn’t what I want.

I found something that sounded promising, putting “{tag}” in the filename to get this result - but this doesn’t appear to work in 1.2.20.

1 Like
2

I think that can only be done via the command line. Documentation: Aseprite - Docs - Cli

3

Having an export option for file naming similar to the JSON one would be phenomenal (in fact I had mistakenly assumed that the “Item Filename” input referred to the output file the first time I used it)!

P.S: I don’t think this is currently possible – I tried many variations of aseprite -b original.aseprite --split-tags --sheet-type horizontal --sheet Sheet.png --save-as {tag}.png, but instead of the expected {tag}.png spritesheet, the frames are saved separately as {tag}{frame1}.png.

4

Same issue here, --split-tags will either export to .gif or isolate frames which means you mean yet another command to concatenate the GIF frames or isolated frame files into a spritesheet.

–split-tags --sheet output_sheet.png (without customising --sheet-type) will export all tags as spritesheets one by one, one row per tag/animation. This is great in some spritesheet import workflows but in this particular case I need one spritesheet per animation.

(and --save-as outputA.png combined with --sheet outputB.png will just do the usual export individual frames to outputA[N].png before exporting sheet, but it’s a separate operation and doesn’t affect the spritesheet output)

Please vote for Additional export options / Multiple file save if you’re interested in batch export in GUI (but we’d also need the equivalent command-line for spritesheets anyway).

5

OK, I wrote a bash script to first export to GIF then re-export them to png spritesheets (using aseprite each time).

It would be even better as an Aseprite script (so we have a command, can bind a shortcut to it and possibly even a popup window so user can set custom parameters) but I need to have a look at the Lua API.

Note that it creates a temporary “temp” sub-folder to do the job.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Posted on https://community.aseprite.org/t/how-can-i-export-multiple-spritesheets-at-once/6165
# Consider porting this to Aseprite Lua API for an integrated menu command

usage() {
  echo "Usage: export_spritesheets_from_aseprite_tags.sh aseprite_filepath

Export all tagged animations in .aseprite file to spritesheets, one spritesheet per tag, to some Export sub-folder,
using the format '[file_basename]_[tag]_spritesheet.png'

Requirements:
- asprite installed and binary in PATH

ARGUMENTS
  aseprite_filepath    Path to aseprite file containing the tagged animations, including extension
"
}

if ! [[ $# -eq 1 ]]; then
  echo "Wrong number of positional arguments: found $#, expected 1."
  echo "Passed positional arguments: $@"
  usage
  exit 1
fi

aseprite_filepath="$1"
shift 1

# Ex: "character"
file_basename=${aseprite_filepath%.*}

# Setup temp dir
rm -rf temp
mkdir -p temp

# 1. Export separate gifs
# Ex: export "Export/character_idle.gif" and "Export/character_attack.gif"
aseprite -b "$aseprite_filepath" --save-as "temp/${file_basename}_{tag}.gif"

# 2. Convert each gif in temp folder to a png spritesheet
pushd temp > /dev/null
	for gif_filepath in *.gif; do
		# Ex: "character_idle"
		animation_file_basename=${gif_filepath%.*}
		# Mute spritesheet metadata json output
		# If you need it, you can add --data "${animation_file_basename}_spritesheet.json" instead
		aseprite -b "$gif_filepath" --sheet "${animation_file_basename}_spritesheet.png" > /dev/null
	done
popd > /dev/null

# 3. Move all spritesheets to Export folder
mkdir -p Export
mv temp/*.png Export/

# Clean up temp dir
rm -rf temp