One thing to be aware of:

Most effect don't render properly in max without a camera and cameras are always perspective.

That said, the trick is (obviously) to move the camera far away and create a very narrow field of view.

Reg. the angles, I can't remember but I'll check... (Feel free to punk me if I forget )

/NJ

In Max 2 you can just set the camera to do an orthographic projection can't you? Or is that just 2.5?

I can't remember the angles off the top of my head - but they're pretty obvious I seem to remember: rotate 30 degrees around X axis, and 45 degrees around Z axis - or something like that.

In all 3D Studio packages you can use an ortho projection. With Max (2.5) just click on the ortho camera projection. For any other, just create the camera view, then switch to user/perspective view to get the ortho look.

The angles for a 2:1 tile is 45 around Y, 30 around X.

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Jim Adams
Co-Designer 'The Light Befallen'
tcm@pobox.com http://www.lightbefallen.com

[This message has been edited by Jim Adams (edited September 22, 1999).]

If I recall correctly, effects such as atmospheric light and fog are not rendered correctly in the "user" view, but requires a perspective camera, or am I completely out of sync here?

/NJ

Graphics question:

Well, I've got 3dsmax and I'm trying to make isometric tiles but I can't! I've tried what you guys said about rotating 30 degrees around Y and 45 around X, and it looks ugly. Could somebody please show me a tutorial or give me an example of an .max file that does this which you could send to my email at: datisme@notme.com

Thanks alot,

Da_KiD

Sorry, I refer to the vertical axis as the Z axis - I'll refer to it as Y from here on in

Okay, are you rotating around the X first, then the Y? If you do it the other way around, everything will be screwed (rotation is non-commutative remember .

As for effects - I'm 99% sure that they render okay through a camera with orthogonal projection, but I may be wrong - I'm far too poor to afford a copy of Max unfortunately. They definately require a camera though - the 'user' view won't work.

If you're rendering sprites, don't forget to turn off anti-aliasing-against-background.

-matt

P.S. re Jim Adams' sig: Isn't the Light Befallen long dead?

Why would you turn off antialiasing against the background? I rely on that for smooth edges!

/NJ

You need exact color-keying, that's why you should turn off AA for sprites.

CU

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Skullpture Entertainment
#40842461

Color keying? No thanxx, I use alpha/edge blending - It look AHOAL better (http://www.image.dk/~noshit/scrshots.html)

/NJ

Matt - a user/perspective view does indeed work - we used 3D Studio v4 and 3dStudio v1.2 for all or graphics for a while there. If you check out our first demo - that's what was used.

On the aliasing - sometime you do need to turn it off, but a better way is to render with the anti-alias, then render a mask without it to clip out the shape with later. If you render onto a black background, it'll give you objects that stand out more when used in the game.

As for TLB being dead - it was for a little bit - our everyday lives got in the way
But we've redone the entire engine now to use 16bit graphics and a way better sound system and should have an actual game demo coming soon.

------------------
Jim Adams
Co-Designer 'The Light Befallen'
tcm@pobox.com
http://www.lightbefallen.com