Texture atlas software

Question

What is a good tool to make texture atlases with? I have a 2d game and I am going to need to shove a bunch of small textures into a bigger one for performance reasons. I know of some that do this job for fonts, but what I need now is one for images for my sprite animations.

Any ideas on what would work best?

Answer 1

I've often wondered this myself so I'm voting up the question. If you're a python fan, you might want to generate atlases the way I do, using scripts that leverage the Python Imaging Library.

Also, NVIDIA has some free texture atlas tools here:

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/texture_atlas_tools.html

Answer 2

Any reason you can't build them on the fly at load time? With sprite animations that are typically of a regular size this is quite trivial and saves you from having to manage the composite art assets.

Answer 3

I needed the same thing, ended up writing a script for gimp

Answer 4

There is not "comment" button for me to put comment on, so I have to post with an answer which is actually not:

@dude, I want to use your "Texture Atlas Utilities", but do not know how to put the plugin into the Gimp to use? Could you let us know how to use your plugin please? Many thanks!