how to create isometric characters (8 views)
Community Forums/General Help/how to create isometric characters (8 views)
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| Hello, I wonder what are the methods to create isometric animated characters with 8 views per animation pose ? Like the characters in Fallout 1 or in Arcanum or in Diablo ? I suppose that a possible approach would be to have a 3d character with animations, and animate it pose by pose and for each pose oriente it in each orientation (0°, 45°, 90°, 135°, 180°, 225°, 270°, 315°), and capture the result (an image) from an isometric view... But in these games there is the possibility to change armors and weapons, and there can be different combinations of armors/weapons, so it may be a better approach to capture the needed image only when the player has finished to equip the character as he wants... A simpler approach would be to use 3d textured meshes with an isometric view... And since the view range would be small and there would not be too many surfaces rendered, it should be fast enough... What do you think about that ? And how would you do it ? Thanks, |
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| The games you mentioned most likely used animations for just the character, and then had equipment animations drawn on top as needed. Not hard to do with 3d applications. If you have a suitable engine 3d models with a fixed view is probably a lot more flexible. Hardware has changed a bit since Diablo :) |
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| used animations for just the character, and then had equipment animations drawn on top as needed @zzz>>good idea, thanks :) But yes it would probably be easier to use 3d textured meshes... Especially now that we have the possibility to create rigged skinned meshes from different premade parts with the addons here : http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=105408 In any case, i will need 3d animated characters, this is always what takes a lot of time/work to create imo... (especially if i want different faces, hairs, clothes, armors, weapons) |
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| @ 3d animated characters Bronze & Iron Age Unit Pack (300 units) http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/86224 bye Ron |
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| I think that i will either use pure 3d or capture the needed character image each frame depending on its face, hair, body, clothes, armors, weapons, animation pose... |
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| Diablo used prerendered sprites with the entire finished creature rendered in 8 directions each time. Ive opened the original mpq file and it's all there (plus some creatures you never see in the game). It is quite memory intensive because there is a lot of wasted space. In a game like baldurs gate they did something a bit different. Each body part is coloured differently and they then alter the palette of the body part to change the appearance of what they are wearing also weapons are rendered separately and follow the hand motion so can be swapped in and out. Finally isometric sprites can be very inefficient to store unless you trim the inage to fit a rectangle and record somewhere a list of dimensions for each frame. |
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| @Derron, thats a pretty impressive group of images. |
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