How create sprites like the Kork sprite in Adventure Kit?

#1 Hey Gustavo, this has been discussed a little in the Image of the Day, with some other Torquer's solutions, but not in a proper forum, so... good question! As of now, there are no 3D models in the AdKit, it's all 2D sprites...

We used an internal tool that was basically a version of the engine that would allow me to designate a a model, an animation, a viewing angle, and a number of frames. The tool would then spit out screenshots of the window and dump them to a specific folder. So all I had to do was set up some automation in Photoshop to batch process the exported files, and do a little assembling by hand to create the animated sprites.

Now you could really do this in any 3D modeling/animation app (Max/Maya/Lightwave/Blender/etc). All you need to do is render an animation so that it produces individual frames (instead of a movie), and do some prep work in a graphics program.

Hope that answers your questions. Let me know if it doesn't. I could go into more specifics about any of that.

#2 And a little more about setting that up here.

#3 Thank you very much Russell. I think i got the idea.

If you could go into more details, i would appreciate. Could you tell me how to set up the 3D modeling/animation app to produce individual frames?

Why use a sprite instead of a 3d shape?

One more point: i'm developing a casual soccer game. How should i create the goals? I don't have any idea.

Regards,

Gustavo Boni

#4 I used 3d max for my characters. I remmember reading about it in gamedev.net but I can't find the url now.

What you do is set up a camera at 45 angle and clone the cam for all directions.

The you use to Render->Video post. You then setup the camera and output settings for Video Post. Then it would produce the frames for you.

hope this helps

Kevin

#5 Gustavo, how you do this specifically is going to depend on what software you are using. But roughly like this:

* position your camera(s) at a 45-degree angle to your model and turn off any perspective on that camera.
* set a beginning and end point for your animation
* define the frames per seceond of your animation, and set it to export individual frames

And 45 degrees is just what I used in the AdKit, it seems like anywhere from 60 to 45 degrees is typical for this kind of game.

I used sprites because I was able to more control the overall look of the kit. I'm very excited to see examples of anyone using .dts shapes in this. Later upgrades to the Adventure Kit are likely to include them.

How you create your goals will also depend on whether you're using 2D or 3D art, how you're dealing with "perspective", the desired viewpoint of the player, etc.

#6 I made an example Blender file that shows how to make sprites like this, and posted a writeup of it in another forum.

You may or may not find it helpful -- eventually I may write this up into a more formal tutorial.

--clint

#7 You would probably be better of rendering the sprites out of a 3d app to get better quality than taking screenshots in TGE no?

#8 Yep, quality would be much better that way. For the Adventure Kit we were going for a look that slightly favored the old simplistic pixel art graphics. But yes, using a modelling app would allow for much more control of lighting and better rendering.

#9 If you're using 3d Stidio Max then set your camera to x = 60, y = -60 & z = 60. For its angles set it to x = 60, y = 0 and z = 45. Tick 'orthographic projection in the parameters rollout. Draw out a box which is 64 by 64 pixels. Render it. Play with your image size & parameters box -> lens and FOV until you get (for example) 64 metres = 64 pixels so that when you create the object you will know that 1 metre will render out as 1 pixel horizontally. You will get vertical shortening by a factor of (if I remember correctly) 16 metres will come out as 13 pixels, so bear that in mind & it is likely to be the same across different 3d apps. Under the menu Customise -> preferences -> rendering check 'don't anti alias against background' unless you want the colour of the background to creep into the edges of your sprite. I also suggest you sepnd time playing with any anti aliasing options you may have since most sprites tend to be small and so need to be fairly crisp if any detail is not going to be blurred out; so keep the anti aliasing fairly low.

If you just want to pixel push them (i.e. draw by hand) in 256 colours then get Pro Motion. It's what it was designed to do.

#10 I should update this thread by adding GamerGirl's recent plan posting about creating character sprites in Poser:

"Getting a Poser character into the Adventure Kit"