ShoeBox: Tile grabber tool for creating tiled maps from screenshots

[rend...@gmail.com]

I am using Tiled for work and I have been working last year on a tool to convert looseless screenshots or level grabs into editable tiled maps with unique tiles in a generated tile bank. Further down the road I might add some tools to update mockups as an artist edits them in Photoshop but the tool links them to a tmx map and updates the tiles / layout as it's seen in the photoshop design.

A overview of the tool can be read here including a video demonstration

http://renderhjs.net/shoebox/extractTiles.htm

The tool comes as part of the ShoeBox app which is a free AIR app that runs on Mac and PC. I haven't found many other tools on the net that do something similar to this tile grabbing, on the other hand having something like this build into Tiled would be awesome, e.g. an interface to load a image or the clipboard bitmap data and it generates a tiled map on the fly.

renderhjs (developer of ShoeBox)

Some examples from the ShoeBox tool:

[Thorbjørn Lindeijer]

Hey renderhjs,

On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 7:40 AM, <rend...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am using Tiled for work and I have been working last year on a tool to
> convert looseless screenshots or level grabs into editable tiled maps with
> unique tiles in a generated tile bank. Further down the road I might add
> some tools to update mockups as an artist edits them in Photoshop but the
> tool links them to a tmx map and updates the tiles / layout as it's seen in
> the photoshop design.
>
> A overview of the tool can be read here including a video demonstration
> http://renderhjs.net/shoebox/extractTiles.htm

I've noticed your tool before (also shared it here:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/104206952440491912596/posts/NnqqGbuFzuH).
It looks really nice!

> The tool comes as part of the ShoeBox app which is a free AIR app that
> runs on Mac and PC. I haven't found many other tools on the net that do
> something similar to this tile grabbing, on the other hand having something
> like this build into Tiled would be awesome, e.g. an interface to load a
> image or the clipboard bitmap data and it generates a tiled map on the fly.

There's actually a Python script developed mainly by Georg documented
on the Tiled wiki which does something similar:

https://github.com/bjorn/tiled/wiki/Import-from-Image

Apart from creating the map file and tileset, it tries to position the
tiles in the tileset in a way that matches the way the tiles were used
in the image, with varying degree of success. The tileset generating
step is separated from the map generating step, so that you can
rearrange the tileset before turning it into a map.

However, I fully agree such a feature would be nice to have integrated
into Tiled, and I've long wanted to implement it but didn't get around
to it yet. There's an issue open about this here:
https://github.com/bjorn/tiled/issues/180

Your tool packs an good amount of tools useful during game development
in a really nice UI. I wish something like that was available for
Linux, and open source of course. :-)

Best regards,
Bjørn