Yeah, but it's not as big a glaring difference in most cases. Although, there were many games that were sprite based where it was quite obvious they did it wrong.


I mean either what you said, or get a tablet and draw your character right in your image editor.
One of my friends Hetdegon (a link to his deviant art page is in my sig) is using the method you described to make his game.


True. Actually, some modeling programs have their own little sprite-making thing that will do what you just said but automatically. I can't remember which ones though.

PPC: Are you gonna make your sprites a normal, 'modern' resolution or are you going for a retro look?

I'm a fan of the retro look myself, from back in the day when there was an actual limit to sprite size; it lent everything a certain uniform style, and the loss of detail tended to leave more to the imagination. I'm of the opinion that Super Nintendo graphics generally looked a LOT better than Nintendo 64; well-done 2D is a lot better than low-poly or poorly done 3D. Super Metroid is a prime candidate for my favorite game ever.

Of course, it takes a special kind of skill to make attractive sprites in oldschool resolution.

But either way, I think you should go for a 'uniform' style, so to speak... There's nothing that turns me off to a game more than a background art style and a sprite style that clash. I guess this happens when they're drawn by different people, probably because amateur prjects don't have an art director (speculation on my part).



Whoa, wait, make that stuff public!

Make a running tutorial thread. Doesn't matter if you're specifically helping PPC, it'll still be nice to have as a reference for the rest of us.

If nothing else at least archive the help you give him so you can post it later or something... pretty please?

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Welcome to the forums!

Looks like a nice link, thanks .

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http://www.persistentrealities.com
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The sprite animation part is pretty cool. I can see using the same techniques for 3D animations (I've been playing with blender, lately).

Hey and how about pixelify the models? Maybe there could be found some synthesis of 3D modelling and good ol' pixel art. There could be special rendering type that would render your models to look like pixel art.

Cos it's clear true that animating in 3D is far more convenient and easy supposing you have models with bone systems which you can rotate as you wish, but on the other hand, it's not that beautiful as pixel art, having all that vectorized sharpy polygon look.

I know that in 3DsMax there is possibility to use so-called Ink&Paint renderer, but that's probably not what you seek.
Now, is this my utopic idea, or does something like this really exist?
I always wanted to know if there are such possibilities - render 3D as pixel-art. If anybody knew, you could give a link or some solution, could you?

Step 1: Render 3D Model with cel (toon) shading. Save the image.

Step 2: Open the image in a decent graphics editor. Size the image to your target size, with sampling disabled.

Step 3: If your graphics editor has one, use a pixelate filter. (Paint.Net and other free apps have these filters.)

Step 4: Using the "pencil" tool, clean up the image.

Step 5: Wonder whether there's an easier, automated way to do what you just did.



There are programs out there that will convert an image to ASCII art. May be one that does this floating around, somewhere...

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I thought the whole point with pixel art is that it's built up pixel by pixel by the artist. This is necessary when using super low resolutions because at those low resolutions (like on cell phone games), you can't just take a high res image and scale it down, so much detail is lost. What needs to be done is to actually do a sort of impressionistic thing where each pixel is placed where it is on purpose to create a specific effect.

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You know, it's not that easy to make characters sprites with all the animations by drawing pixel by pixel. I've come to one conception that could prove none too deadly - to draw manually all the static images like the environment, items etc. or those things that use only 1 - 2 anims, and render the characters with vast number of animations. What do U think about such synthesis?

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actually alot of the old school that im used to was drawn by hand ... but there are tricks.. im not 100% what the question is... but one thing i know is that a good tablet is key here.. Capcom,(though using pixel art in early games...) used hand drawn scanned images...that were tweenedby hand ... what the goal is though is to make the start and end of each animation and fill in according to time. Study real life movement to learn to animate. As for format: A good sheet will work. This way you can index the colors and have interchangable colors easily... my .02


oh and i recommend gimp...

Edit: to be more clear: there are tools = (scale, rot, etc..) that can help with the tweening process... you just have to have and eye for it...

Question for you, primalbeans: Have you even seen also animated characters hand-drawn in isometric view? You know, platformer view for characters is easier to draw, but when it comes to isometric views, is it possible to do it well without animating and rendering the models?
Plus, what about the time consumption?

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Even this world is "programmed" by a Creator, the most skilled programmer of us all. What do you think of all that exists and all the environmental phenomena? He that maketh all had programmed it all and whenever needed, He can call one of the functions with input specified by Him.