Sprite Sheet Detect Individual Sprite Bounds Automatically

Here's an approach

• Convert image to grayscale
• Otsu's threshold to obtain binary image
• Perform morphological transformations to smooth image
• Find contours
• Iterate through contours to draw bounding rectangle and extract ROI

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After converting to grayscale, we Otsu's threshold to obtain a binary image

Next we perform morphological transformations to merge each sprite into a single contour

From here we find contours, iterate through each contour, draw the bounding rectangle, and extract each ROI. Here's the result

and here's each saved sprite ROI

I've implemented this method using OpenCV and Python but you can adapt the strategy to any language

import cv2

image = cv2.imread('1.jpg')
original = image.copy()
gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
thresh = cv2.threshold(gray, 0, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY_INV + cv2.THRESH_OTSU)[1]

kernel = cv2.getStructuringElement(cv2.MORPH_RECT, (3,3))
close = cv2.morphologyEx(thresh, cv2.MORPH_CLOSE, kernel, iterations=2)
dilate = cv2.dilate(close, kernel, iterations=1)

cnts = cv2.findContours(dilate, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
cnts = cnts[0] if len(cnts) == 2 else cnts[1]

sprite_number = 0
for c in cnts:
    x,y,w,h = cv2.boundingRect(c)
    ROI = image[y:y+h, x:x+w]
    cv2.imwrite('sprite_{}.png'.format(sprite_number), ROI)
    cv2.rectangle(image, (x, y), (x + w, y + h), (36,255,12), 2)
    sprite_number += 1

cv2.imshow('thresh', thresh)
cv2.imshow('dilate', dilate)
cv2.imshow('image', image)
cv2.waitKey()

How about this? The only downside is that you'll need a writable version of your image to mark visited pixels in, or the floodfill will never terminate.

Process each* scan line in turn
  For each scanline, walk from left to right, until you find a non-transparent pixel P.
    If the location of P is already inside a known bounded box
      Continue to the right of the bounded box
    Else
      BBox = ExploreBoundedBox(P)
      Add BBox to the collection of known bounded boxes

Function ExploreBoundedBox(pStart)
  Q = new Queue(pStart)
  B = new BoundingBox(pStart)

  While Q is not empty
    Dequeue the front element as P
    Expand B to include P

    For each of the four neighbouring pixels N
      If N is not transparent and N is not marked
        Mark N
        Enqueue N at the back of Q

  return B

You don't need to process every scanline, you could do every 10th, or every 30th scanline. As long as it doesn't exceed the minimum sprite height.