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Geek Culture / Total War style units

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Fallout
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Posted: 27th Aug 2004 05:21
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Anyone got any ideas on how I can get nice looking animated sprites for a Medieval/Shogun Total War style game? I was gonna make some 3D models/animations in 3D canvas, but I'm struggling to figure out a good way to capture pics of my animation. I think a 3D animation with captured images is the way forward, as I need lots of different angles, but I can't think of a decent way to grab the images.

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Teh Go0rfmeister
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Posted: 27th Aug 2004 06:21
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fallout u BUFFOON. i was making a total war demo. SHUT IT... or help me.

what i was doing was making an troop object, and record it from 12 angles around it while hes doing his animations, and save each one as an animated texture while then plays on a plain.

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Ian T
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Posted: 27th Aug 2004 06:28
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You'd save a lot of grief, file size and loading time by just rendering the objects in real-time.

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Hell Dragonz43
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Posted: 27th Aug 2004 06:55
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Doesn't Blender support animation?


www.freewebs.com/mycomputergames
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adr
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Posted: 27th Aug 2004 07:41 Edited at: 27th Aug 2004 07:42
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Here's a possibility if you really want 2D sprites...

Create the objects in 3d, animate them, load them in to DBP and use GET IMAGE on a bright pink background to save out your frames of animation. Using PaintShop Pro, you can load in these pink images and have it mask out that colour to transparency. Then you've got x frames of animation in PNG format, from all angles, with all frames.

Quite why you want 2D (unless you want the 2D look) I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure "Horde" did it like this (3D renders -> 2D).

Anyway, good luck.

(Also a cheeky excuse to try out my new sig)


I think the taxis are bulletproof
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Fallout
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Posted: 27th Aug 2004 07:56
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Well, if any of you geezas have played total war, you'll know they have thousands of units on screen at once. If you put about 20 animating 3D models into db, it has a substantial slow down, so you can see the problem. With the 2D sprites slapped onto a plain look, you can have hundreds of people running about, and it doesn't drastically dent the frame rate. I'm looking at about 50 units per side, but 100 animated models just kills db. From a distance (which is how they'll always be viewed), they don't look too bad. Here's a shot of a quick first cut effort:



Sorry for the full res image, but else it wouldn't be clear. Also, pay attention to the frame rate, which would be impossible if these were animating models.

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Peter H
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Posted: 27th Aug 2004 09:07
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nice

"We make the worst games in the universe."
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zircher
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Posted: 28th Aug 2004 06:43
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Good stuff.

Side note: Lower left, two super-imposed guys facing the camera.

Anyone know how to get rid of that transparency glitch? Since it is just the edge around the first guy burning through the second guy and not the whole transparency erasing the second guy, I imagine there is a way to prepare the image to get around it.
--
TAZ

"Do you think it is wise to provoke him?" "It's what I do." -- Stargate SG-1
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Zone Chicken
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Posted: 28th Aug 2004 06:57 Edited at: 28th Aug 2004 06:58
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Make your models animate them how you want and make avi's of them in 3d canvas, then use virtual dub and just make image sequence batch the avi to bmps or tga to get the sprites you want.

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/virtualdub/VirtualDub-1.5.10.zip?download
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Preston C
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Posted: 28th Aug 2004 07:43
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Quote: "Anyone know how to get rid of that transparency glitch? Since it is just the edge around the first guy burning through the second guy and not the whole transparency erasing the second guy, I imagine there is a way to prepare the image to get around it."


Posted in DBPro Discussion not too long ago, can be used for anything with transparencies

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=34713&b=1

Cheers,
Preston


Intel Celeron 1.3 Ghrz 512 MB Ram nVidia GeForce FX 5200 128MB
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Mattman
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Posted: 28th Aug 2004 08:20
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wow, thats a great idea

[url='http://www.ufanz.com/teams/tracking.asp?ti=689&mi=97723][/url]
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Fallout
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Posted: 28th Aug 2004 09:17
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Yeah, thanks for pointing out that transparency issue. Only problem is that I'm dealing with 256 image files per animation (16 directions, 16 frames per animation). The idea is to make the game more about machinary than people, so I wont need more than a handful of animations, but either way, I can't edit all those images by hand. At the moment they are autogenerated.

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Ian T
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Posted: 29th Aug 2004 12:53
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There's no need to switch to dds. Just:

set object filter <object>,0

It will disable mipmapping, though, which might be a bit of an issue. Hmmm....


Yeah, I have played Total War actually, so that was a stupid comment....

I was working on something sort of like that at one point but I was using graphics that'd already been made . What are all those old games' sprite graphics good for anyways-- they're the perfect size for units in a massive scale RTS these days !

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