Hey everyone. I'm new here and I'd just like to share with you one of the things I've been working on: Getting 2D sprites to work in a 3D environment:
"In a traditional isometric RPG, switching sprites is pretty simple: If the character is moving south, show his face; if he’s moving north, show his back. That works because the player’s point of view is always from the same direction. But what happens when the player’s view is arbitrary?"
The short explanation is that "I find the object’s front/back and right/left directions with a vector transformation of (0,0,1) and (1,0,0). Then I find the direction from the camera to the object with a simple vector subtraction, and then I take a dot product, relative camera direction with the object’s front direction, and relative camera direction with the object’s side direction. The absolute value of the dot product tells me whether the camera is more closely aligned with the front/back or right/left. Then I check to see whether the dot product is positive or negative, to decide between showing the front or the back, or between the left or the right."
Got all that? For full details, you can check out my entry at
http://himekosutori.com/?p=232. I did the work in UDK, but the concepts are not engine-specific.
Edit: And sorry, can anyone tell me if there's a way to shrink the images?
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