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[Bones]

Dan, top notch trains.    
Tasty.


Got a little carried away with the spray can...

[JasonPickering]

man ocean waves are hard


any ideas or good reference?

[DanFessler]

thanks a bunch guys,

if you're curious about the process, here's what I did.  I made a decision early on that I'd model the trains in 3D before starting the pixel process.  Otherwise, the vast majority of the process would have just been measuring angles and proportions by hand to be consistent across all angles *before* even really starting the pixel rendering process...

so I made a model and set a 100% white ambient light to the scene.  Instead of texture mapping, I simply painted the faces of the model with solid color - just enough for me to keep track of all the detail later on in the pixel renders...



Sometimes I'll duplicate+invert+expand the model to provide a rough outline to help keep track of detail...


Then I render out the frames at game-scale...



then i pixel over them to a polish.

[MaloEspada]

thanks a bunch guys,

if you're curious about the process, here's what I did.  I made a decision early on that I'd model the trains in 3D before starting the pixel process.  Otherwise, the vast majority of the process would have just been measuring angles and proportions by hand to be consistent across all angles *before* even really starting the pixel rendering process...

so I made a model and set a 100% white ambient light to the scene.  Instead of texture mapping, I simply painted the faces of the model with solid color - just enough for me to keep track of all the detail later on in the pixel renders...



Sometimes I'll duplicate+invert+expand the model to provide a rough outline to help keep track of detail...


Then I render out the frames at game-scale...



then i pixel over them to a polish.

brilliant process, dan.

[jotapeh]

Well played, sir. You win the pixel game.

[J. R. Hill]

Is the light source directly above?

[chumez]

Those locomotives look amazing! Did you use a cel-shader?

[DanFessler]

JR Hill:
well technically there were no lights set to the scene besides full ambient - but yes, the colors were painted as such as to reflect a top-down light.  The reason for this is simple; so we can flip all the right-facing frames to the left without causing some weird lighting inconsistencies - halving our workload.

Chumez:
Thanks! Nope, as explained in my previous post, the polys were simply painted flat colors in full ambient light (no shading).

[Xion]

for the animated ones did you animate the model or was the motion done all in the post-3d pixeling?

[DanFessler]

Monsoon2D (ben) actually animated the two shown here.  For the gears on the steampunk, I actually supplied him with the gear rotation rough-animation which he cleaned up, but for everything else (and most animated things in general, unless it's a very mechanical-type animation) we animate by hand frame-by-frame.

[Türbo Bröther]

The colouring on that bone train is sick.

[J. R. Hill]

idk

[saibot216]

It's a little bit haunting, but I like it!

[phubans]

Dan... You WILL be the artist for Madhouse HD even if I have to kidnap you and lock you in the basement! I don't even have a basement, but I'll dig one just to lock you in it! 

But seriously... Holy crap dude... Seeing this makes me think we should do MHHD in pixel rather than Spelunky-HD style O_O Either way, you gotta be the art guy for this project 

[Pietepiet]

Sometimes I'll duplicate+invert+expand the model to provide a rough outline to help keep track of detail...

I love this technique, we got taught this in college. Makes for some great Jet Set Radio-style models.

Good stuff overall, man