AuthorTopic: Rendering 2d (pixel) sprites in a 3d world  (Read 24011 times)

Offline Dr D

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Re: Rendering 2d (pixel) sprites in a 3d world

Reply #10 on: January 16, 2013, 05:32:34 am
That looks seriously cool. Would play.

Offline Streaksy

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Re: Rendering 2d (pixel) sprites in a 3d world

Reply #11 on: January 16, 2013, 06:27:45 am
Thanks man.  :D  Wish it could have been published.  I'm thinking about rebranding it and seeing if I can sell it independantly.

Offline Cage

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Re: Rendering 2d (pixel) sprites in a 3d world

Reply #12 on: January 16, 2013, 10:50:13 am
I'd also suggest that any multi-angled sprite games (that weren't pre-rendered) were essentially pixel art.  I think for Doom they actually used photos of physical models for some sprites, but even then there must've been a lot of direct pixel work happening. 

I agree (And as far as the process goes, this was exactly the case in Doom), and I think that considering them non-pixelart, is something that comes from the modern-idea of pixelart - today's limits are self-imposed, yesterday's limit's were actual hardware limits - if I could suddenly work with 256 colors instead of 16 for example, I'd do so :)

I'm sure the artist did use their tools to their full potential, and pixelart of the days used both the approach we use today and index-painting as it's called.



Quick compat between EGA and VGA (Doom Palette) - personally, I'd like to use most of the colors to make the transitions as fluid as possible and it's just tedious to do it by hand on every pixel (unless it's a specific detail part). Actually, since most of the 2,5d games had the dark-fog effect for atmosphere, and some transparency (using transparency tables) as standard, limiting the color palette would make them ugly, which obviously wasn't desired :P

Here's a sprite from Wolfenstein, drawn from scratch if you ask me.



Either way, you still have the whole character to draw.

I think most games used prerendered sprites or models, eventually with some hand touchups, because it's a bit less of a workload - pixelling a character walking, attack, pain and death frames ( I guess it's at least ~10 unique frames ) in 5/8 directions (depends if the character is symetrical) is quite a bit :) Some of the stuff can be copied and used (for example head and torso) but the rest has to be drawn in from scratch. I've animated a character like this digitally painting and it took a while :)

Bigger color palette also made it more attractive to use prerendered 3d artworks which was quite a hype back then ;) while pixelart wasn't anything special - it was a standard of working with 2d GFX back then.

Creating a 3d game with pixelart graphics, is a tremendous workload. Some examples of such projects, and what limits they've used to lighten the amount of work a bit:

Amiga:

http://hol.abime.net/512/screenshot
Fears Amiga first person shooter - it uses pixelart for it's gfx, and of the cool amiga-style variety :) The characters are one sided though!

http://hol.abime.net/2739/screenshot
Gloom's enemies have more directional sprites I think, but notice they are pretty simple though.

As far as modern stuff goes, there's exactly the same two approaches:

1. Keep it simple stupid ;)

Aforementioned Minecraft, which is really simple in terms of GFX (I'd say it's even primitive, since the pixel tech used for it's GFX is pretty low-level)

Or the idea of totally oldschool, 8-bit console look - for example the MegaMan 8Bit Deathmatch:

Lower res sprites, color limits - you can finish your sprites a lot quicker

2. Establish some kinds of limits - either directions or the amount of frames in animation:
Retroblazer - uses single direction for it's enemies, judging from what I've seen (correct me if I'm wrong!)
(Oh and not everything is pixelart there, IIRC)

« Last Edit: January 17, 2013, 06:06:57 pm by Cage »

Offline Carnivac

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Re: Rendering 2d (pixel) sprites in a 3d world

Reply #13 on: January 16, 2013, 03:31:49 pm
Or the idea of totally oldschool, 8-bit console look - for example the MegaMan 8Bit Deathmatch:

Oh god my eyes...

Some of those games pictured work well (the old Duke Nukem and Doom and such did the mixture effective enough for the time).  Used to have Strider 2 on my PS1.  Wasn't a bad game.  Decent graphics but so many damn gaps in between gameplay to load the next boss or miniboss or whatever.
Minecraft on the other hand ranks as possibly the ugliest game I've seen in recent years.   I just don't get that game at all.
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Offline Facet

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Re: Rendering 2d (pixel) sprites in a 3d world

Reply #14 on: January 16, 2013, 11:34:25 pm
Streaksy: Grin on face throughout video, yes please. Loving the unobtrusive exposition. I have very fond memories of the Micro if not the game itself.

Cage: Great post!

I'd love to see more work with it's roots in that transitionary period of game graphics. For some reason I -really- like 'billboarded' sprites in 3D environments, they seem to me to retain so much of the appeal in the 2D qualities, with that particular kind of immersion that 3D navigation allows. I'm sure there's some interesting things you can do by acknowledging and manipulating the difference of dimension but I can't come up with a good example off the top of my head.

Offline Elk

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Re: Rendering 2d (pixel) sprites in a 3d world

Reply #15 on: January 17, 2013, 12:47:48 am
I think the newest Pokemon X and Y games fit in this thread really well... they really did well with how the pokemons appear...they look pixeled, yet they are modeled, im astonished somehow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4bIrWryFc7A
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