I''m currently working on a iso view 2-d game. I want to have high quality graphics (ex: Diablo II) so i was planning on making the characters w/ a 3-D modeler and then animating them. Is this a good idea or is their an easier way? I have milkdrop but theres no way to render the animations to images... I also have poser4 (demo version) which lets you render to images, but it wont let me render anything because its only the demo version.. I have 3D Max, should i just use that? I would rather use milkdrop because it looks more geared for character models. Anyone have any suggestions or advice? thanks in advance.

That is how I do the models for my iso game (see link in sig). I personally use Blender since I do all development under Linux. Blender is free, open source, has powerful tools (skeletal animation, inverse kinematics, interactive editing of animation curves, particle systems, Python scripting interface, NURBS, Bezier curves, metaballs, Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces, yada yada yada...). Did I mention it was free?

All characters are modelled (high polygon, as detailed as I can make them) and animated (skeletal animation, IK where applicable) in Blender, then rendered to series of Targa images for later processing and importing into the game.

I use 3D modelling for creating characters, objects, some spell effects, terrain features such as cliffs and riverbanks, etc... Anything I am not capable of drawing by hand using the Gimp.

It is a lot of work, but not as much as drawing everything by hand, frame by frame, and I get a lot better results than drawing by hand.

Josh
vertexnormal AT linuxmail DOT org

Check out Golem: Lands of Shadow, an isometrically rendered hack-and-slash inspired equally by Nethack and Diablo.

Plus, you can reuse a lot of the high-detail models for cutscenes or title art or whatever.

Drawing it by hand is really only viable if you''re doing simple sprites, without much detail. Sure, creating and animating the 3d models is a lot of work, but after that it''s trivial to render all the possible views you might want.

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[[ Gaping Wolf Software ]] [[ GameGenesis Forums ]]

i suggest if youre not terribly serious about this project, try just drawing out your monsters freehand. Glob some color together to form basic shapes, then mold it a little bit pixel by pixel, add some shading, then detail, then throw a dark outline around it and youre done. animation is tricky and very time consuming, so keep it small, keep it simple. If youre going to go for the 3d approach, if you dont know the software you are using, youre going to feel pretty hopeless from the first moment you start (unless your hellbent on learning everything, or have the patience of a saint, with alot of free time on your hands). dont make sprites too big to handle, especially if hand drawing them (if you model them you can scale them to whatever hells ize you want). so dont go makin a crazy 800x600 pixel game or higher if its yer first time or your experimenting because youll only win a big bag of frustration, and learned experience of what NOT to do again in the future.

Not to hijack the thread, but when you say "Blender is free", does that mean that its not only "free" as in no money to buy or use, but you are free to distribute (as in with your game) anything you create with blender (models or rendered images)? And not under GPL?

Blender is free as in no money to purchase or use, yes. The source code is covered under the GPL, but the GPL does not touch anything you create with it (models, animations, renders, .blend files, etc...) You are free to do whatever you want with those with no restrictions.

Once upon a time Blender was a commercial product, owned by a company called NaN (Not A Number) and requiring a registration key to unlock fully, but in 2001 the Blender Foundation purchased the rights to the source code to GPL it, and now it''s all free and good. NaN bankrupted and are no longer in the picture. (I tell you this in case you get confused as some others have--myself included--by out of date information, such as can be found in the knowledge base at elysiun.com. Some of that info still sounds as if Blender is commercial; but trust me, it ain''t.)

Now, if you create your own customized, specialized version of the Blender application to distribute, then it comes under the GPL as a derivative work.

Josh
vertexnormal AT linuxmail DOT org

Check out Golem: Lands of Shadow, an isometrically rendered hack-and-slash inspired equally by Nethack and Diablo.