sprites from 3d art
The rpg I've been working on with friends for xna has been going semi-well, we're still prototyping in a simpler hobbyist game making program at the moment, but I'm kind of on the fence on how i want to do the graphics.
Our first experiment with 3d didn't go well over the summer, most of the problems seemed to stem from not figuring out the best export settings for an fbx through maya into xna.
So on the rpg we're working on we've decided to stick with 2d, but i'm making the sprites from 3d.
But the hitch here is, i want all the work i do to be applicable portfolio pieces for environmental and character art (low poly). Most games that use pre-rendered sprites, diablo, baldurs gate, age of empires, many others. Use very high-poly meshes since there are no constraints for becoming a sprite.
Any suggestions...?
At the moment i'm considering just going for it: lowpoly models-> sprites because i only want to work low poly. Also i don't plan on making normal maps for this since the light sources in the game cannot effect normals on already rendered sprites.
Our first experiment with 3d didn't go well over the summer, most of the problems seemed to stem from not figuring out the best export settings for an fbx through maya into xna.
So on the rpg we're working on we've decided to stick with 2d, but i'm making the sprites from 3d.
But the hitch here is, i want all the work i do to be applicable portfolio pieces for environmental and character art (low poly). Most games that use pre-rendered sprites, diablo, baldurs gate, age of empires, many others. Use very high-poly meshes since there are no constraints for becoming a sprite.
Any suggestions...?
At the moment i'm considering just going for it: lowpoly models-> sprites because i only want to work low poly. Also i don't plan on making normal maps for this since the light sources in the game cannot effect normals on already rendered sprites.
Replies
Now as for the final game art versus your portfolio; consider the importance of high detail meshes in today's games. The high poly models you create sprites from could also be used to bake normals in today's games. As well as the training tool it'd be for your future skill set.
On the other hand, going for low poly models may be the way you want to go if that's the type of games you want to work on.
One alternative would be to bake out high poly models for the sprites, and once you pick your favorite models, you turn them into low-poly models with texture maps etc for your portfolio. This would cost less, unless you are actually going to use every single model for your portfolio, which might be overkill.
yeah this would be a good option, but i tend to work low to high because i prefer baking in zbrush for characters.
the other reason i think i'm favoring the low poly's is i'm very crude with animation, and have yet to get locators, fk/ik to work properly, so much i might actually import these models into max to use with the dummy rig.