TexturePacker XCode Integration - 5 minutes that save hours

This small guide shows you how to fully integrate TexturePacker into XCode. This is what really saves time: You use 5 minutes to set things up and never care about sprite sheets anymore!

Advantages:

• 5 minute setup
• Saves hours of clicking
• Automated updates of the sprite sheet
• Full integraction including clean and build phase
• Building sheets only when things changed
• Automated creation of hd and sd sheets on the fly from hd assets only
• Complete control directly from XCode

• Your sprites are hd and located in your project directory assets. All sprites for one sheet are in one directory - sheet1 in this example. If you use sd only thats no problem - you just have to leave out the hd parts and remove the –scale 0.5 from the script.
• Your output sheet will be in resources.

This script is for TexturePacker 1.1.0. Please upgrade to this version if you still have an older one.

#! /bin/sh

TP="/usr/local/bin/TexturePacker"

if [ "${ACTION}" = "clean" ]
then
    echo "cleaning..."
    rm ${SRCROOT}/resources/sheet1.png
    rm ${SRCROOT}/resources/sheet1.plist
    
    rm ${SRCROOT}/resources/sheet1-hd.png
    rm ${SRCROOT}/resources/sheet1-hd.plist
    
    # ....
    # add all files to be removed in clean phase
    # ....
else
    echo "building..."
    
    # create hd assets
    ${TP} --smart-update \
          --format cocos2d \
          --data ${SRCROOT}/resources/sheet1-hd.plist \
          --sheet ${SRCROOT}/resources/sheet1-hd.png \
          ${SRCROOT}/assets/sheet1/*.png
  
    # create sd assets from hd sprites
    ${TP} --smart-update --scale 0.5 --max-size 1024 \
          --format cocos2d \
          --data ${SRCROOT}/resources/sheet1.plist \
          --sheet ${SRCROOT}/resources/sheet1.png \
          ${SRCROOT}/assets/sheet1/*.png

    # ....
    # add other sheets to create here
    # ....
fi
exit 0

The importan thing is that you don't forget –smart-update because this enables a check for not creating the sheets if nothing is to be done.

If you use sd only remove the hd part and use

    # create sd assets from sd sprites
    ${TP} --smart-update --max-size 1024 \
          --format cocos2d \
          --data ${SRCROOT}/resources/sheet1.plist \
          --sheet ${SRCROOT}/resources/sheet1.png \
          ${SRCROOT}/assets/sheet1/*.png

instead.

You can add the script to your XCode source tree to be able to change the settings without using an external editor.

Add new target to your project:

Use external target:

Give it a name:

Now you should be able to run the target with build and clean.

Double click your main target and add the dependency to the TexturePacker target:

This is how the project look in the end:

Have fun Andreas