Could I, if I wanted to, make an animation in 3d Studio MAX, and then use it in my 2D game as a 2d animation? Programming::~Fredric(const Annoy_Ance)

3DSMAX can render anything you make into an AVI or a single image file. You could then load this into your game.

Seriously? Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet! Thanks!

I''m learning C++ AND 3d Studio Max at the same time, so when it comes time to developing a game, I won''t need so much help in making it... plus, I want to know both!

Programming::~Fredric(const Annoy_Ance)

A better approach to 2D games would be to render the objects in 3DSMAX at the angle you want for your game (top, isometric, side et.c.) into seperate bitmap files and animate them in the game. AVI files are static and no good for in-game animation, only cut-scenes and similar.

AVI files tend to be really big too, if they''re not compressed, 3DSMAX export AVI''s isn''t what I know of.

Also, if one frame is bad, it''s really hard to correct when it''s AVI, with bitmaps it''s a piece of cake.

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Daniel Netz, Sentinel Design

"I'm not stupid, I'm from Sweden" - Unknown

Hmm... very good point, I''m going to with you that. Thanks again!

Everyone here is just so helpful! ^_^

Programming::~Fredric(const Annoy_Ance)

I''m writing a game just like the one you proposed. It''s an isometric engine with the bitmaps implemented like Spiff suggested, except I save all the bitmaps in one large file, for ease of storage. In my storage program (which doesn''t yet do compression), it saves one BITMAPFILEHEADER and BITMAPINFOHEADER from the first image, plus a few other numbers, then writes the image data continuously. As long as your images are the same width and height, this works fine. If you''re only using 16 bit colour, you can convert your 24 bit bitmaps (3 bytes per pixel) into one word (2 bytes) per pixel - saving 1/3 of the disk and memory requirement.

The only problem with saving lots of bitmaps is that it takes a long time to do in 3D Studio. If you have a bad camera angle, or you''re using anti-aliasing and you don''t realise it, you''ve wasted heaps of time because your images won''t fit in with everything else. For MAX, what I''d recommend (from a little experience) is to create a camera at 45 degrees or so, save it in a file, then import it into every scene you create and take screenshots from that perspective. From there, NEVER move the camera except to zoom in / out. If you have to rotate a character, rotate the model rather than the camera.

One more thing: Field of View... your characters and tiles may seem out of proportion (top is bigger than bottom) if you use a regular FOV. What you should do is use a really small FOV (sorry, don''t know value) and then zoom out until you can see your scene fully. This virtually eliminates any perspective error, and make sure you turn off anti-aliasing in the Render setup!!

C++ is the language of the not-so-ancients.
Learn to speak it well.

BeamMeUp

MAX can render to compressed AVIs just fine - just make sure to install and select the appropriate codec. It might be a better idea to render each frame to a separate image file and use video editing software to create the final AVI, though.

Also, the "Orthographic Projection" camera option will likely be more flexible than using a tiny FOV when rendering graphics for isometric games.

Edited by - spock on 3/9/00 12:34:13 PM