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From 3D to 2D

Name:	Mark
Date Posted:	Mar 28, 2007
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I'm not sure how the Adventure Kit guys did it with Kork, but I'm sure it may be a similar method.

Anyway, I'm not good at 2D art, when it comes to perspectives anyway. Instead I used TGE.

Basically I made a black box, slapped it in Torque, and made the ground black. I then put my 3D character model in this black box. What I'm going to do next is attatch a camera to the character and make him run.

This will allow me to take snapshots of his animations, and eventually put them all together in PSP to make a 2D animated character when placed in TGB.

Just to make sure my method would work, and more importantly look okay, I did a small test.

Not bad.

I think using this method, it would look totally awsome with the recent animation pack that was released for TGE. Another great thing about this method, is that the addon packs made for TGE in specific can also be used in TGB, making them even more valuable.

I'm sure this is all nothing new, but it's one quick and easy way to do things :)

Another way to do it, and probably even a better way woud more than likely be ShowTool.

Gosh darnit, why didnt I think of that before!

yea he was never here to begin with, haha, but he's been sitting on my HD forever! Time to put him back to work.

I'm wanting to give him 3 eyes instead of two. Without his suit he's more like a hairy beast with a really big mouth and sharp teeth. And pure white eyes that glow. He'd look sexy naked.

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David Higgins (Mar 28, 2007 at 02:06 GMT)

Mark, there's a program called SpriteForge which is designed for doing exactly this -- it works with many common 3D file formats, and can even understand animations ... although, it doesn't work with DTS/DSQ's ... so you'd have to have the raw 3d files with the animations in them ... depending on the sources you have, it may be a nice alternative ...

You could also probably pull this off in TGB, though I'm not sure about lighting and what not ... but you could drop the Shape into TGB, find the rotation by matching the shape up to the onscreen artwork, etc ... get a better feel for how it looks, before going through the trouble of actually exporting it --

Otherwise, looks great --

EDIT: Added TGB Info
Edited on Mar 28, 2007 05:12 GMT

Ray Noolness Gebhardt (Mar 28, 2007 at 02:17 GMT)

Its probably a better idea to either use 3D Studio Max (if you have it) or Blender. Yes Blender is sort of a pain to learn, but all you really need to do with it is import the models, setup the materials and then render it. If you really want to get nice renders, its highly suggested that you get a copy of YafRay also. YafRay does photo tracing and most of the crazy stuff you can do with Mental Ray. They are both free programs, and you could get really nice renders out of the combination of programs, even with only a nights worth of work. It would be much easier and nicer looking than taking screenshots inside of Torque.

Tom Spilman (Mar 28, 2007 at 07:00 GMT)

@Mark - How we actually did this for the AdvKit was thru a custom tool written in TGEA. I wrote a little mod that allowed Russell to load up a DTS and set parameters for size, camera settings, and animation. You then told it how many frames to render out and it dumped out pngs for each frame. Russell then photoshop'd it together into the animations you see in the kit.

We considered other methods like 3dsmax or ShowTool, but it seemed to me that the engine itself already had all the power we needed... i just had to put a crude interface on it.

Stephan (viKKing) Bondier (Mar 28, 2007 at 08:52 GMT)

@Tom: and you did release this as a resource, didn't you? ;-)

@Mark: Purple man is back, yeah! 8-)>

Andy Hawkins (Mar 28, 2007 at 11:28 GMT)

Can't you just include the DTS in TGB? I thought that's how it worked?

Tank Dork (Mar 28, 2007 at 15:38 GMT)

Yes you can use dts and dsq in TGB but 3d models have limitations in TGB currently and some clip if not made well. You also have to orient the model in script each time it is added to a level. By doing a little extra work and making your 3d models into animated sprites, I think you save yourself headache later.

Note: If you are using a non-animated (or little animated) model like a spaceship, vehicle, etc. then the 3d abilities of TGB seem to work fine for me.

Tom Spilman (Mar 28, 2007 at 15:38 GMT)

@Stephan - Actually i didn't because it was a mess... it wasn't worth releasing at all.

@Andy - You can use DTS in TGB... and our TorqueX work will do that instead of sprites. There is just too much sprite data with a high quality animated character to have more than a one or two. The problem with DTS in TGB is that the stock T2DShape3D is missing alot of functionality that you would need. After we get complete with the TorqueX work i'll copy that work over for TGB.

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