Is there something inherently wrong doing this

I've always been more into 3D and suddenly out of nowhere I have a strong interest in doing pixel art. Now to the non-devs out there they may think 3D is an easy transition to 2D and man this is the furthest stretch from the truth, I couldn't pixel art if my life depended on it currently.

But this made me think, perhaps I could just render low res 3D meshes and it turns out pretty great (to me at least). I've read about people doing this before so I know it's nothing new, heck even as far as i'm aware Donkey Kong on SNES was pre-rendered, low-rezed and then doing some slight adjustments for things that didn't look great as well as limiting colors and such.

So here I am, I go in Unity, import the very old SoldierCharacterPack from Mixamo, then I toss that model into 3ds Max and render out a couple of frames, but the frame below - looks rather great to me and I just cannot see a reason NOT to do it this way, it's easier for ME (mainly the animation aspects) is where I'd have most of my trouble with drawing it by hand, so 3D allows me to really save time, work the way I like and still do a 2D game.



So why is it that so many people don't claim this is pixel art? Is it simply because I didn't draw it by hand and that the old diehard fanatics are simply louder than the rest of the crowd? Or is there something in this image that really distinguishes its self very easily that I'm missing between hand drawn vs rendered.

 

It doesn't look bad, and if it's the style you want then go for it. It worked fine for Diablo 1 and Starcraft 1. (Using the 3/4 view allowed their sprites to look a little chunkier, which I prefer.)

Your image is 114 x 64 pixels. I think when you get down to the resolution that a lot of people think about with pixel art, such as 32x32 or 32x48, or even 16x16, you need to hand draw sprites to create the impression of features because you can't actually draw those features in full detail. Also, some artists arbitrarily choose to limit themselves to certain color palettes as either an artistic choice or to emulate the restrictions of old consoles.

 

About the size, yeah it was just a quick render test just to see how the results would even look.
I hadn't realized Diablo was pre-rendered graphics that's pretty dope.

The general sizes I was aware of, but the problem is when you get into like Duke Nukem 3D, some characters were like 128 x 64 pixels I believe, imagine animating that, would be totally crazy hard and I give props to the animators of the time because that seems like a ton of tedious work.

I just never understood why people really complain about doing 3D to 2D. I mean is it immediately discernable? Is it technically a 'lazy' way to do it? I guess what I'm trying to figure out is why people (some people), get so upset about this.

I've heard using cel-shading might help with shadows and such too by having sharp lighting rather than blending like it is in the image, going to give that a try.

 

Had to copy this into photoshop to get a good look at a proper pixelsize at it:




The pixelart community imho wouldn't count this as pixelart, because pixelart is about making very deliberate choices about the compromises and abstractions that you need to make when communicating your ideas efficiently with so few pixels. Looking at your image, I can't tell if that guy is holding a gun or not, and if so what kind of gun it is. For a game that's a big deal.

So it's really just pixelated 3D art. Which can look good enough and function well enough, and good games have been made that way. I don't want to discourage you from trying it. But you need to be extra aware of what new problems the approach is generating and how you're going to address them.

Iirc Dead Cells did pretty much what you're trying to do, but with more advanced shaders, you should look for articles or videos on their art pipeline.

 

Those are some really good points. From them points you made it does seem ever more apparent that when I put an albedo on a mesh, color pallet is very important - use E.G. - 3-4 colors for example, make sure darks dont move over other darks (E.G. - The black gloves, black gun on hip and black knee pads).

I was just looking at Dead Cells and it seems that intentional color placement is just as important as the ease-of-use of using 3d meshes.

So to me - colors, mixing, blending is probably the most important part. Not a pixel artist so it wasn't apparent to me initially until you made points about couldn't see the gun, etc. There is a gun, in a holster on his hip - it's clearly NOT visible. Now if I was using more intentional albedo and colors the gun could have easily been distinguished.

I'm definitely going to look at dead cells some more.Heck I may even go buy the game, I do that sometimes - i'll buy a game just to see how people pieced the art, lighting, etc together. Need to see what the game is about too, perhaps I'd enjoy it

 

Sounds like you are on the right track, glad I could help! Keep in mind that you don't just need to look at each individual sprite like that, you need to look at the whole ingame artwork of your game as a whole and treat any random screenshot like a painting that needs to convey a lot of information both aesthetically pleasing and easily readable. Color is important, light vs dark is even more important. Keep your eyes open when looking at games that do this well. Not all do, especially "realistic" AAA games sometimes are an unreadable mess with greybrown characters on greybrown backgrounds.

P.S.: check this out:
https://support.steampowered.com/kb/9334-YDXV-8590/dota-2-workshop-character-art-guide

 

Agree with those above - and i have also done this process several times in the past. For me being a 3D animator - this process just increased my output. Also small corrections can be made to the sprites after rendering in any 2D package.

Whatever process that fits your workflow - is not for anyone else to sneer or fuss about. It's all about the output at the end of the day. GL bud

 

Glad y'all were able to help
Definitely learned something from all of this

 

With real-time 3D you can have objects react realistically to changing lighting conditions. Also you have objects that can be seen at any angle, without having to plan-out what frames you'll need ahead of time. These are reasons why I probably wouldn't employ this technique myself.

Still, I think the approach that you're talking about would be good for mobile (maybe?), or if you wanted a retro look, or if you wanted to combine traditional sprite art with 3D rendered models, or if it's just the easiest way.

But like theANMATOR2b was saying, use whatever technique will empower you to crank-out the best looking art in the shortest time. We solo devs have to do what we can.

 

I always opt for the fastest way, and usually that means piggy-backing off the work others already did.

End goal is to make a game, nothing else.

 

A wonky technique a couple of clients requested was to have the final render - rendered out 1/2 the size of the final in game sprite size, and then prior to importing, we scaled up 2x, using that non-blurring upscaling process, and made any corrections needed on edges and diagonal lines.

I'm can't remember exactly why these clients requested that process, I'm guessing it had something to do with making the art look more "authentic" towards pixel art. At the end of the day though - they were happy so that was all that was important.