BMR's Blender sprite experiment

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BMR
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BMR's Blender sprite experiment

Post by BMR »

So as a lot of you know, I've been mucking about with Blender and teaching myself 3D stuff. I've also been mixing it up with pixel art, trying to get a convincing look going with sprites that saves me time pixeling, while still looking decent as pixel art. Recently, there was also talk about animation, and that got me tinkering around more with Blender, trying to get good-looking pixel sprites using 3D software. I've also been toying with the idea of making a sprite generator for some time now, and while I do already use one of sorts for any NPCs or PCs, it does have limitations, mainly in that adding stuff to it takes a lot of time. I thus decided to give it a go with Blender, and here's my initial result:

Image

That sheet clocks in at 6+1 colors, leaving me with 9 more colors for hair, clothes, etc... My pixelled-by-hand sheet looks like this:

Image

Of course, the pixelled one has a lot more detail, as well as much better outlines. Right now, I'm trying to rework the geometries of the model in order to achieve better detail. It's going to take a lot of doing, but if I get this right, I should be able to assemble a sprite generator of sorts that should save time when making WalkTall sprites.

Here are the walk animations in action:

Image

For reference, the sprites by row in the new set are:

1. Base pose
2. Walk A, Walk B
3. Raise left arm, Raise both arms
4. Point arm, Point both arms
5. Left arm to side, Both arms to side
6. Look left, Look right
7. Kneel, Sit
8. Walk A, Walk B, Attack A, Attack B, Cast, Hurt, Weak, Dead
Being from the third world, I reserve the right to speak in the third person.

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SwordPlay
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Post by SwordPlay »

looks awesome! you are really talented!
3D stuff is a PITA but you make it look neat-o. Looks like cel-shading! Your pixel art is really good too! I'm a bit intimidated lol!

I find 3D stuff insurmountably hard, though, you seem to be much better at it then I ever was!
If you can do it, more power (and experience, and skill) to you, and that'd be cool to see!

Will there be models of different sizes? Height for example, or broadness, such as muscular and skinny models? Will there be female/children models for that matter?
If you make a sprite generator, would that be available for anyone to use? It would be an awesome tool.

Your pixel art is great as well. If you combined pixel-art textures with your 3D models, that would be sweet-as-a-beet!
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BMR
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Post by BMR »

Virtuous Sword wrote:looks awesome! you are really talented!
3D stuff is a PITA but you make it look neat-o. Looks like cel-shading! Your pixel art is really good too! I'm a bit intimidated lol!

I find 3D stuff insurmountably hard, though, you seem to be much better at it then I ever was!
If you can do it, more power (and experience, and skill) to you, and that'd be cool to see!
Heh, yeah, 3D stuff can be pretty tough to get into. Had to beat my brain into submission just to figure out Blender =p Only been doing it a few months so far, so still a lot of room for improvement.

Virtuous Sword wrote:Will there be models of different sizes? Height for example, or broadness, such as muscular and skinny models? Will there be female/children models for that matter?
If you make a sprite generator, would that be available for anyone to use? It would be an awesome tool.

Your pixel art is great as well. If you combined pixel-art textures with your 3D models, that would be sweet-as-a-beet!
Absolutely! In my current generator (well, not really a generator, more like a GIMP file with a bunch of different layers that I can mix and match) I've got three models: one male, one female, and one child. Only one actual body type for each of those though, so no thin/fat or tall/short. With 3D stuff though, might be easier to do. Still be tough to get everything to sync up in a generator, but more doable.

As for being available to use, yeah, it definitely will be. I've released a bunch of art stuff over the years, and always in the public domain. If I do get this generator going, it will also be in the public domain.

As for pixel-art textures with 3D, I have tried doing that before. It did look pretty cool, but it did take some time in doing. Still, might be worth looking into again to get better results. Heh, here's hoping then.
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Post by TMC »

Wow, neat! Although the results have some problems, I'm mostly impressed with them. But realistically, how well does it work if you texture the models, and if you modify the model geometry as you add clothes, do you need to modify any of the poses manually? Meaning, how much work do you actually save? A heck of a lot, I would guess!

Arghh, I wish I had time to work on this sort of thing; I would love to make a project out of generating better outlines that look hand-drawn/better post-processing of rendered images. (Well, maybe I will have the time and inclination, after I finish my studies!) This sort of image processing is actually quite related to my research topic. What's the state of the art for generating pixel art using 3D?

What script/shader are you using to generate these? I had a brief look and found this one for Blender:
<img src="http://initialsgames.com/main/wp-conten ... d-copy.png" width="700">
http://initialsgames.com/main/?p=1360
That looks like a really good result, but there are a lot of polygons in the model, and the output is much higher resolution than yours, so I'm a bit skeptical. (Also, I'm disregarding that image at the top of the post since it doesn't seem to match the model next to it.)
Last edited by TMC on Mon Mar 20, 2017 12:25 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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BMR
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Post by BMR »

Actually, I looked into that very post when I was starting out with 3D -> Pixel Art. The first image in that post does actually match the model, it's in another post somewhere on the interwebs, but he he also provided a 360 view of that model all pixelized. Unfortunately though, I wasn't able to get it to work, as the provided software is Windows only.

As for the time it saves, it is indeed a heck of a lot. I can make one clothing model, say a shirt, and once it's rigged it will automagically sync up with the main body. What's more, using a bunch of masks and stuff, I can have different parts of the model not render, for ease with building a generator.

Right now, I've got a color ramp that is affected by the normals of the model. It allows me to specify exactly which colors I want showing up, and which I don't. Each model is relatively low-poly (obviously) making it easier to move things around. It should be doable with higher-poly images as well, and that's something I'd have to experiment with.

For state of the art pixel art to 3D, I'm not entirely sure. What does come to mind though, is Guilty Gear. It's not pixel art, but they do use 3D models to create incredibly impressive results that look hand-drawn.

Image

Image


I've read a few articles about how they achieved that look, and some of it is actually applicable to 3D to pixel art. Still needs some more experimentation though, so here's hoping I get there eventually, heh.
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Post by TMC »

So... you're not using any special shader for pixel art? Just a colour restriction, cell-shading, and outlining?

I feel that good placement of details and outlines pixel-by-pixel could be formulated as local optimisation problem which can't easily be solved by a simple shader. But that Japanese tool seems really good; is it not feasible to run it using wine or a VM?
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Post by BMR »

No special shaders yet, but I'm looking into a few that might give me the effect that I want.

I did try it using WINE, as well as a VM. Didn't work out too well though, and eventually I just gave up on it. But yeah, the results I've seen people get with it have been pretty impressive.
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Post by TMC »

Dang.

But the examples all seem to be untextured models. It seems really good at drawing outlines, so I assume it (and most other 3D to pixel art pipelines I've seen, which mostly produce cell-shaded graphics) can't handle texture very well. And that's what I would be interested in working on: how to scale down textures and sprites. (And its probably easier to create textures than geometry for details anyway?)
Last edited by TMC on Tue Mar 21, 2017 10:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by shakeyair »

I don't know how useful this will actually be, but it's a link to a post on Pixelation where a guy made a super impressive Unity pixel shader.

http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=18842.0
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Post by TMC »

Ah, thanks. I'd seen that thread before but forgot about it. That guy is using a lot of complex textures (see especially the airship on the 2nd/3rd last pages), although his method is real-time, and he didn't seem to show any low-res renders. He disappeared without releasing his tool, but did link to a much simpler unity shader from someone else: http://kode80.com/blog/2016/02/23/pixel ... index.html
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