My quest to perfect the prerendered isometric look!

tanka

Hi guys,

Over the past few days I've been trying to perfect the prerendered isometric look that you see in plenty of casual ios/android/facebook games (eg:clash of clans). One place that I have been drawing particular inspiration from, is this deviantart page: http://roma-n.deviantart.com/

I have been experimenting with several different techniques and rendering methods within modo to try and achieve the look.. I feel like I'm getting the rendering techniques close with the desk and the rook.



Using the information I've built up I'm going to follow up with some more detailed buildings in this style.. Once I'm happy with those I might move onto some characters.

Jeff Parrott

I would give

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JunxueLi/20140417/215654/How_to_prepare_isometric_assets_for_your_games.php

a read. He drops some good knowledge. When I've worked on these I tend to paint over the assets after they've been rendered.

JedTheKrampus

If I were you I'd take a look at Shadowrun Returns. They packed up all their 2D isometric assets with their game and you can look at them all individually in the editor they provide. You might learn a lot.

tanka

Excellent help guys, that article is very helpful. The Shadowrun returns editor is very good aswell. It isn't exactly the style I'm going for, but their modular approach to isometric level building is very insightful.

DWalker

Depending upon which projection you're going for, you want the ratio of height:width for the base rectangles to be either 1:2 or 1:sqrt(3); yours is roughly 1:sqrt(2). These diagrams might help:


The first is the 'proper' projection, but the second generally looks better in computer games because straight lines have a 1:2 slope. (Technically, the camera angle for the first should be 35.264 degrees.)

Also, don't forget to disable perspective when rendering.