3DSmax render setup for pixel art style

warxsnake

Hi!

I have a question regarding pixel art rendering from 3D models with textures, from 3dsmax.

I am aware that going this route instead of painting everything in 2D compromises quality.

Does anybody know the best way to get a textured model rendered as an approximation of pixel art?

Are there any methods/plugins besides not having any Anti aliasing on the render output? Toon Shader + no AA?.

I've honestly never experimented with this stuff :S

Thanks!

poopipe

You'll probably want to disable filtering and blur on the textures

warxsnake

Will do. Also in mental ray settings, where can I fully disable AA? There seems to be no toggle, just a sample quality slider.

For now I've been limited to Scanline + Ink N Paint + no AA + light tracer.

No AA seems to destroy the ink effects, with AA you see black lines, without AA they disappear. Although thats not so bad. But I do want to experiment with MR instead of Scanline as I can have more options.

Here is a very early test, I only had old untextured APC on hand so obviously it looks kinda flat.



Edit: Here's a result with a textured bottle:

Mark Dygert

If you're using Scanline (and you might as well) you want to disable Global Super Sampling as well as Anti-Aliasing. I really don't see an advantage to Mental Ray when you water down a render this much?

The only thing that Mental Ray could offer over scanline is maybe adding a mental ray AO shader to your material? It could help give you more definition of the pieces.

For the most part when you do 3D pixel art you spend a lot of time creating and defining the diffuse material and more or less burning in the lighting so all the pieces read like they should. Applying a flat material to something isn't really going to do all the work that a properly defined, well painted diffuse will.

warxsnake

Awesome, thanks for the help. Yeah I've been testing this with models not suited for the final result, especially that APC with no textures, so I'll make a specific model and texture built for what I'm trying to achieve, with baked AO as well. I'll update the thread with what happens on that front.

Mark Dygert

You might want to try out the script called Pixeled
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/pixeled

I doubt it will help much because I think its strictly 2D and not 3D voxel based, but there might be something that converts 3D to voxels which could give you some better results too?

poopipe

i'd almost be inclined to go off viewport grabs for this sort of thing

turn off texture filtering in the viewporta and Bob's your uncle basically. the simpler lighting setup will probably work to your advantage.

warxsnake

Here's a quick test as promised with a more pixel-ready object. Obviously some fixes remain to be done, mainly to the cavity map, and also getting the exact right angle for taking iso shots, as right now, the angle on my renders is pretty random besides being ortho.



This is probably the type of thing that is easy to draw from scratch in 2D in the first place, that's what I get for being a pixel art noob I guess. My workflow to get to this point is not that bad, but still kinda stupid.

I'm also just using Standard mats, not really seeing a real advantage from InknPaint

renderhjs

Can't share what I am working on right now but another nice example I found is:
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=74.msg736603#msg736603






What I figured out in 3dsMax:
Scanline
* no anti alias
* texture filtering
* in 3dsMax global settings > render > disable dithering (causes noise otherwise on your render). Also check: don't anti alias against background just in case.



after that I wrote a AIR script that generates a outline effect around all pixels that don't have transparent values. It also adds a sharpen filter (convolution matrix) to punch out the pixels that are opposing each other in color or contrast.

Test result from a different game (not treated for this style)

With a proper treated texture this looks pretty nice actually

Eric Chadwick

Excellent post!

renderhjs

another excellent post on TIG
http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?PHPSESSID=96bv7qnqs14dn2kq0lhcdmfn23&topic=7291.msg112649#msg112649

Abby3D

This is a really cool thread!

Here's a sprite sheet render plugin:
Sprite Render by Geoff Samuel

I use default 3dsmax lighting, orthographic cameras, and (as others have said) no antialiasing.

If your object or character has holes in it (like a tattered cape or shredded wings), or a bumpy surface (like chains), you might be tempted to keep your model low poly and rely on an alpha channel for the texture. But 3dsmax automatically antialiases those texture holes, even if antialiasing is turned off. You can circumvent it by turning off Filter Maps, but it may look crappy or too jagged. I've found it easier to just model holes or other things I'd normally leave for texturing.

Mark Dygert

What a great thread! Thanks for all of the links guys!

cdavidson

i like how that simcity social looks on facebook.

SimonT

Really cool to see how you render pixel style. Love it

renderhjs

I posted a thread on the game that I used this technique for
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1656406#post1656406

some of the results





At times we had to tweak a little bit the highlights in the texture so it would come down as a visible full 1 pixel thickness same for the other details.