Supplying you guys with all new custom sprites

[outer]

Ive almost finished learning advanced weight mapping in 3ds max for a personal project. After lurking around these forums, eventually making a few posts regarding sprites, suddenly realized making sprites is actually incredibly easy for anyone who already has access to military/scifi models and knows how to rig, map, animate and render. I am one such person, and will soon be rigging and animating my stuff for the personal project I mentioned.

All I have to do is render each animation cycle out as single frame an boom there are your sprites Im certain Goldhawk used a similar process. The only issue here is I dont have access to the original models/textures, so any new sprites would either be from my personal collection or community supplied. I also wouldn't mind making new simple low-poly models specifically for you guys as long as there not a bitch to rig, map an animate.

If all goes according to plan, we could see a substantial number of new custom sprites for weapons, vehicles, armor and enemies. At that point I would step back and let you guys handle the code work if you were up for it.

[edit]

Post process of the renders should also be fairly easy when using a Batch Process in Photoshop. http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Batch_Process_Images_in_Photoshop

Edited December 7, 2013 by outer

[lemm]

I don't think that there are any sprites that have a shield in one hand and a free secondary hand, if you're looking for something to make.

There are no sprites for the predator armor holding a rocket launcher, either.

[Chris]

There is a shield / unarmed combination already. You'd do better creating new aliens than Xenonaut units, I'd have thought - people love new enemies.

We created our sprites by rendering a 3D model from 8 different cameras in Maya at 480x480, then batch processing them in Photoshop to add a 3px (I think) black outline and then shrinking them down to 120x120px.

Then you need to use Playground SDK 5's Filmstrip tool to create spritesheets from the animation sequence. It's a pretty long and involved process, to be honest!

[StellarRat]

Ive almost finished learning advanced weight mapping in 3ds max for a personal project. After lurking around these forums, eventually making a few posts regarding sprites, suddenly realized making sprites is actually incredibly easy for anyone who already has access to military/scifi models and knows how to rig, map, animate and render. I am one such person, and will soon be rigging and animating my stuff for the personal project I mentioned.

All I have to do is render each animation cycle out as single frame an boom there are your sprites Im certain Goldhawk used a similar process. The only issue here is I dont have access to the original models/textures, so any new sprites would either be from my personal collection or community supplied. I also wouldn't mind making new simple low-poly models specifically for you guys as long as there not a bitch to rig, map an animate.

If all goes according to plan, we could see a substantial number of new custom sprites for weapons, vehicles, armor and enemies. At that point I would step back and let you guys handle the code work if you were up for it.

[edit]

Post process of the renders should also be fairly easy when using a Batch Process in Photoshop. http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Batch_Process_Images_in_Photoshop

Can you finish the firethrower animations so can roast our enemies? That would be awesome! Edited December 12, 2013 by StellarRat

[Gijs-Jan]

For those really interested in going this route:

You can probably replace Playgrounds Filmstrip Tool by either:

- LibGDX's Texture Packer, analyze the .xmls used in the files and write your own output format. (Easy task for those with knowledge of Java)

- CodeAndWeb's TexturePacker; and use it's option to create a custom exporter.

[relkin43]

so I've read scuttlebutt about a mech that never got animated :3