Need Pointing In The Right Direction For Flat Mesh Paper 2D In 3D Creation (MAYA)

PolyCore33

Hi, I want to create something like in the videos bellow. 

I want it to be layered flat meshes, but more detailed than the ones in the videos. So this would likely be without a sprite sheet and more like 3D animations, but not sure how I would go about setting up all angles. Would it be like a phoneme, but for the body when setting up left, right, front, and back angles? I want to be able to do something advance like a turning high flip animation.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4pLTWjEuHw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj1YdbVxp4s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bde5dJMRBCE&t=618s

I'm more of a visual learner, so pointing me to video tutorials and online courses for this specific type of work flow would really help, but giving proper search terms would help as well. BTW, this is for UE4.


Thanks!

Eric Chadwick

Well you have plenty of good examples right there.

The first image, from Doom, is made by rendering a fully-3D model from different angles. If you want that look, you should just do it in regular 3D, not try to convert it into 2D shapes. Just my advice.

PolyCore33

I was thinking more close to an anime style for a 2.5D or paper 2D sidescroller. Closest to that being fully 3D is Guilty Gear and Dragon Ball Fighter Z, but not quite what I want to go for. 

The image was just an example of the angles I was going for, and don't want it to be low res and pixelated. if I create all angles as separate models from flat layered meshes, I'm not sure what the process would be to set them up for turning animations. Would it be like a phoneme, or would it still have the requirements of a sprite setup. I need to know what it is I need to look into.

Eric Chadwick

Try a simple test.

Take 8 screenshots of a simple mesh. Control their visibility with a rotation constraint, so your software (which one are you using?) swaps between the poses as it rotates.

That's pretty much what you're asking for.

If you want pointers for specific software, put that in your topic title.

Read this post. It only makes sense.
https://polycount.com/discussion/63361/information-about-polycount-new-member-introductions/p1#use

PolyCore33

I have Maya and Zbrush. I 3D model, but animation is new to me. I don't want to do exactly what the first video shows. 

I guess what I can do is start off with a simple character, make separate flat topology shapes for the body, position them, give them simple color textures, then make a mirrored version of it and try to figure out how to swap between them for side to side movement.

RN

PolyCore33 said:

Would it be like a phoneme, or would it still have the requirements of a sprite setup. I need to know what it is I need to look into.

You can use any techniques you want if you're going to render it to a sprite sheet, but if you want the character to animate in real time then there's fewer options.

The animation method you need to use for this is called "cut-out" and you can learn more about it from the docs of animation software:

- https://docs.toonboom.com/help/harmony-15/premium/getting-started-guide/character-building.html

- https://docs.toonboom.com/help/harmony-15/premium/getting-started-guide/cut-out.html

- https://docs.toonboom.com/help/harmony-12/essentials/Content/_CORE/_Workflow/Gaming/004_Export_to_Unity/009_H1_Export_Har_Anim_to_Unity.html

- https://blog.smithmicro.com/unity-and-anime-studio-moho-pro-the-making-of-the-monster-mingle-app/

People also use warping effects to give the illusion of depth (see this thread for great examples of this, done with Live2D's Cubism software), internally this is done with subdivided flat meshes with the points moving around that causes the texture to warp:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaF7aLE89qQ

But this warping effect can only go so far. You can't use it to do a full turn around obviously, because of the problem shown in that first video you linked to: at some point you might reach the limit of how much you can deform the drawing (such as when rotating in a direction that's not aligned to the plane of the screen), so you'll need to substitute the drawing(s) during the sequence.