next »

[SolarLune]

That's cool, shao! It ended up really detailed. Nice job!

I thought I posted this, but I have a video tutorial series on pixel art using GIMP. It's around 5 parts in so far, and has a little bit on color contrast, a little bit on animation. Anyway, check it out if you want.

[Skaidon]

Thanks a lot for all the links (went through every page, bookmarking!)

Really I'm looking to create some games with similar art style to Kairosoft games, so these tutorials are a good place to start!

[clockwrk_routine]

Crossing Posting for future reference:
Rotoscoping 3D for Isometric Art

Intro
This tutorial describes how I go about making orthographic isometric sprites i.e. top-down sprites using 3D models and painting over them, rotoscoping.  Why would I go through the trouble?

*It's fast - by using a single model and animating it in one direction, I can rotate the model to cover fill a whole sprite sheet.  Let's say the animation is 6 frames long, your sprite can move in 8 directions, you'll have to 36 individual frames to paint (up,upright,right,downright,down), mirror in one direction to get the remaining 18 frames for a total 54 frames.  Traditionally animating is done using onion skinning, imagine 36 frames for a single character for one action. 

*It's accurate - I often have trouble imagining a complicated action, like sitting down, from other angles.  Animate your model once, and you can rotate to get an accurate reference for your frames.

First you want to get your hands on Blender. In this tutorial we are going to animate a spinning square pillar.  I won't cover rigging/posing/animating models in this tutorial, but here's an example anyways.



Shortcuts

Before we get started here are some shortcuts I will be referencing often:
'r' - rotate
'r then x' - Rotate along X axis
'r then y' - Rotate along Y axis
'r then z' - Rotate along Z axis
note: while rotating, you can specify exact angles using your number keys ex. enter 'r + x + 45' and it rotate your model 45 degrees along the x axis.

'g' - grab and move, you can also add x,y, or z to move along those axis.

's' - scale

'alt + a' - reset scale/rotate/location

't' - open/close toolbar - both 3D view and UV editor have toolbars.

'tab' - switch between edit mode and previous mode

'numpad 0' - switch to Camera view

'u' - unwrap in edit mode


Setup
Set up your window so you have one 3D view, UV editor, and Properties window open like this:



In our 3D view we want to setup our scene like this:



I added 3 objects a plane, a cube, and a camera.

Plane: This will be our Canvas
3D View:
*(r)otate 45 along X axis
*(s)cale larger than cube
*(alt+a) reset scale
*(tab) into edit mode and (u)nwrap using first unwrap option
UV Editor:
*hit '+ new' to add a texture to the plane, make the texture a power of 2, 1024x1024 default works.
*shrink our UV island to a power of 2, in my case 256x256. 
In the (t)oolbox of the UV Editor you can specify the location of each individual vertex

move our UV island to the bottom left corner


Cube: this will be our Model
3D View:
*I scaled it along the Z axis but you don't have to, it's just for demonstration.

Camera: Our viewport.  The camera requires more of a
3D View:
*(r)otate 45 along X axis
*(numpad 0) to Camera View
*(g)rab and move in center & front of Cube.
*(g)rab and move plane center & front of Cube.
Properties > Object Data Tab (the camera symbol):
*Switch to Orthographic
*Change Orthographic Scale to fit Cube and Plane in Camera view


Process
Now that we have everything setup we can start painting!

3D View:
*select our Plane
*Change mode to Texture Paint Mode
*(t) to open toolbox
*Switch Brush mode to 'Erase Alpha' and erase the alpha of the plane revealing the cube underneath
*Switch back to 'Mix' mode and now paint over your model



Once that frame is painted, we can tab back into edit mode of our Plane, and move our UV island in the UV editor to a different part of the texture.  preferably adjacent, you can use the snapping tool found in the bar of the UV Editor/3D View, set to increments of the grid:



Tab out of edit mode.  select our cube and rotate it 22.5 or 45 degrees, depending on how smooth you want our rotating animation.  Select the plane again, and repeat until we have enough frames.

this is the cube (4 frames long) animated after our tutorial:



Fin
For these examples I haven't added detail to them, that I would import to a dedicated GFX program like graphics gale/photoshop/gimp. I'm kind of a lazy writer, so if anything is unclear lemme know and I'll clarify and update this post.  I should probably do videos but my setup is too slow for recording.  Hope this was helpful nonetheless! goodnite!

[shao]

This very good tutorial, I use another method, DAZ3D positioned itself with the figure in perspective and take it as a model, if I need any animal or creature looking models for the blender and put them in position, then I take as a basis.

[renderhjs]

similar to DanFessler I used a aliased render setup in 3dsMax to render vehicle sprites. In 3dsMax I
Renderer: Scanline

• no anti alias
• texture filtering
• in 3dsMax global settings > render > disable dithering (causes noise otherwise on your render). Also check: don't anti alias against background just in case.

A photoshop action / script would then at the end add a 1 pixel border around the sprite to get the outline effect.

For the game Expendables 2: Deploy & Destroy Tower Defense Game
http://deployanddestroy.com.au/
We create a series of sprites with this method.









Also related, ilkke our pixel artist on the team who also did several of the textures for these models also did some Character sprites as can be seen in this timelabse

[eyeliner]

Oh, man... I want this for Blender!

[DanFessler]

Great work on that game Renderhjs and Ikke!  Looks awesome

[itos]

Really good work Renderhjs. I was looking for a way to create pixel art but combine it with 3D. Do you have a render animation done with that technique (instead of just making the sprites).

[antoniodamala]

Does anybody has any tutorial/reference thread about simpler/minimalistic pixel art (like towerclimb, sworcery, super time force, etc.) ?

[Ashkin]

It's just another style, really. The best way to learn about it is to look at pictures from games of that style and try to copy them/create variants on them until you're familiar with the style.

[indiePub]

All of these links are awesome! I'm really into pixel art, I need to try some of these out soon.

[Trystin]

Those sprites all look so crisp 

[psi-punk]

These are incredibly awesome. Were these colored / detailed further after being rendered out of the 3D software? Any chance of a peek of one of the finished sprites? Especially the choppers 

[comma]

There are more good tutorials about pixel art?

[Trystin]

Holly shit renderhjs, thanks so much. 

[Mashhunter]

Hi Guys
This is a very basic tutorial and introduction to pixel art I did internally at a company. It might be useful for anyone just starting to play about with pixel art.

https://simonm-hunter.squarespace.com/tutorial/

[Skippi]

Hi Guys
This is a very basic tutorial and introduction to pixel art I did internally at a company. It might be useful for anyone just starting to play about with pixel art.

https://simonm-hunter.squarespace.com/tutorial/

thanks! beautiful Tutorial, and congrat. for your work, awesome!!!

[rocknlouie]

I think I might have a few repeats, but here is what I have collected up over time:

Les Forges English Translations
So You Want to Be A Pixel Artist? (Tsugumo's Tutorials mirror)
2D Tile Art Basics (Super Metroid & Tileart Analysis)
Give Your Sprites Depth with Subpixel Animation
A Seiken Densetsu 3 Style Guide
One Way to Find Colors
About Pushing Pixels for 2d
Mark's Pixel Art Tutorials
Pixel Art Texturing
Not a tutorial, but u will learn a lot about ramping
Creating Pixel Art
Wayne Schmidts Television Pixel Page

I found these awesome things recently, Kiwinuptuo's tutorials on DeviantArt:

Basics
Colors
Shading
Textures
Tree
Human
Flag

Compilations:

gas13 Tutorial mirrors
Pixelation Forums - Tools, Resources, Linkage
30 more tutorials




Pixel Editors
A while ago I did research on pixel art editors and generic image editors, testing out about 25-30 different ones. I finally ended up settling on Cosmigo Pro Motion, and even spent the 78 bucks to get the pro, and it was worth every penny. Every program I tried had a different selection of features, and Pro Motion was the only one that had it all. Graphics Gale was the second most feature rich, sporting many tools, and is preferred by many. But, some of the workflow is slower and dated compared to the others, for example cloning things takes multiple key presses combined with clicking each time, compared to just clicking once over and over in the other apps. Even zooming is somewhat gimped, because there is not a single way to get the mouse scroll wheel, or the sliding of the mouse to control it, and some of these other programs even have both. A lot of the other apps were probably created in response to the aging interfaces of Pro Motion and Graphics Gale. Unfortunately, while the interfaces are slick and the workflows are very click efficient, especially like Pixothello, Pyxel Edit, D-Pixel, and AESprite, they are all still missing many things. Usually even some basic things like the eye dropper, selection tools, tile repeating, palette management, or proper exporting/importing. Graphics Gale and Pro Motion are the only two that I would say are fully featured.

Cosmigo has all the basics, and goes overboard and gives you things like creating ramps straight in your palette, complete control over your palette, dithering brushes, a multi-shade brush you can use to lighten and darken in fixed ramps , onion skinning and frames for animating, layers, alpha channels, masking, tile mapping, saving and loading brushes, modifying and transforming your current brush on the fly, etc. There are very few feature that any of the other programs have that Pro Motion does not have, and it has twice as many as any of the others. The only problem with Cosmigo is that its a bit cluttered with too many features, so there are a lot of weird default shortcuts (all changeable), and it takes a little longer to figure out where everything is. But unlike Graphics Gale, this is not a permanent problem, because you can eventually learn to have a very quick and efficient workflow that is not hindered by the application itself. Its not like we overlook photoshop because it has too many features, but I do have to admit Pro Motion's interface still looks very win3.11 even though they have actually kept updating it since then.

Maybe you feel that you don't really need all those extra features and want to go the completely free route, then I would definitely check out Pyxel Edit, Pixothello, D-Pixel, and AESprite, Tile Studio, and Graphics Gale in case I was too harsh. Actually, I just checked up on them, and it looks like Pyxel Edit has added a ton of features and started to charge 8 dollars, but they also still provide the old version for free. I think I am going to support Pyxel Edit as much as I can, because this program has the most potential to be better than Pro Motion, if it isn't already.

For the iOS, I think the only real contender is Sprite Something. For android, none of them are nearly as feature rich as that single iOS one, and many are missing basic tools or you cannot change colors. I would recommend Pixelesque for all around, Pixels Touch because you can save palettes, and Pixel art Painter because it can open existing image palettes. Sprite Maker is the only one that I know of that animates, but its tools are lacking.

[surt]

Graphics Gale was also pretty feature rich, but some of the workflow is just terribly slow, for example cloning things is a chore, even zooming is a chore.

What?

[gggfhfdh]

WHAT A CHORE

alternatively


SUCH A CHORE