Hello

i want to animate a cube that flip, like the one on Bloxorz mini game

but i dont want 2.5D. i want to Top-down version

so the first and the last frames are normal square

but i dont know what should i do between them

i Attached my animated cube 15 frames (First 7frames = the last 7 Frames but the opposite direction ^^ )

tell me if you need the frames :)

any tips or help ?

Thank you very much ^^

just make it shrink until it is just a line and then grow back into its old shape

Hi.

There are some improvements to be made. A cube rotating when being looked at from above doesn't vary in vertical span, only in horizontal span.

Yours is not quite doing that: it has some vertical variation, which it shouldn't, and it's not varying enough horizontally. You need to fix that.

To know how much the cube needs to grow horizontally, read on.

Consider a "unit" cube (a cube with edges of length 1). When this unit cube is rotated half way, it has an exact ?2 horizontal span. This is given from its diagonal, which becomes aligned to the ground.

Since you want your cube to have a specific edge length (say, 150px), the middle frame would have a cube of horizontal span of ?2 x 150px = 212px. So from the start to the middle frames, you're simply interpolating a shape that grows from the first frame (150 x 150) to the middle frame (212 x 150), and then back again to the end frame (150 x 150).

Notice that for any frame the height doesn't vary at all.

Thank you very much ^^

but what should i do for the angles

i mean the first square has 90 degree angle and the mid must have something like 45o degree, is that right ?

another question :D why is it ?2

I would do it in Blender like so:

Also it would be slightly less than the square root of 2 of you were to be true to perspective.

another question why is it ?2

Because of the Pythagorean Theorem. When you have a square of sides measuring 1, the diagonal of that square measures ?2.

A cube is made up of 6 squares, so the same relation is carried. The only difference is that instead of sides of length 1, you want sides of a certain length in pixels. You multiply that pixel length by ?2 to get the actual size of the diagonal in pixels.

When the cube is in its middle frame (exactly at a 45º rotation), the diagonal of its side faces is aligned to the ground. That's precisely its entire horizontal span when looked at from above, so you know the biggest horizontal frame size you need is that.

This is what happens when you look at it from the side (not from above like you want), just to illustrate:

Just, instead of the above values of (1) and (?2), in your actual animation it'll be (side_length_in_pixels) and (side_length_in_pixels * ?2), respectively.

Also it would be slightly less than the square root of 2 of you were to be true to perspective.

Good point, I forgot to mention that I was referring to an orthogonal projection, so that's why it's exactly Sqr(2).

I would also animate it in 3D like you did - let the software do the interpolation and lighting, you just worry about animation.

i dont think i understood all of that :( sorry

can you tell me how the middle frame should look ? (length, angles)

If you are looking for a outlined look like you attached to your first post then you can download the gif I posted, open it Gimp and trace the lines on each frame, delete the layers from my gif, and export the whole thing as a gif and BAM! you got it!

i dont think i understood all of that sorry

can you tell me how the middle frame should look ? (length, angles)

Kryzon has explained it to you in detail and I don't think he could walk you through perspective drawing in any more detail than he has. Many, many kudos to Kryzon for his patience! :)

Chances are you will need to study perspective drawing theory if you want to make the game anything more than 2D (and even then it wouldn't hurt). Even using Blender does require you to understand what you see, ie. how you should position the camera for different rendering results to match in the final game. I recommend you look into it some more, you have been presented a good amount of resources.