Games [WIP] Robok - Using 3D Animations to create 2D spritesheets for my game

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Hi Everyone!

I am curently working on a 2D adventure platformer I called ROBOK (temporary name).
It's still at an early stage. Ideally my goal is to release a demo of the first level in October.

Last week I mostly focus on creating the animations for my character.
I tried to reproduce the same technique they used for Ori and the Blind Forest. (Don't expect my animations skills matching the incredible James Benson skills tho x°)

So I created a 3D model and animated it in 3D space before rendering every frames to create the spritesheets. The workflow will probably need some adjustement, but I am quite happy with the smooth result I get.

The advantage of this technique is that if I have to make some change to the design of my character or the animations, I don't have to redraw every frames.
Here is a devlog I made to show my process :

Later I'll probably make some test with deformers to get some more cartoony and dynamic effects.



If some of you have some knowledge with this type of techniques, I would be very curious to heard about your experience !

 

Super cool! as a 3d guy I've always wondered how to do this!

 

owlhowell> I am glad you like it !

Last week I processed all my spritesheets to put them in unity and setup the state machine for my main character.
I used Nuke to make the workflow smooth. I guess with a lot a patience you can do it manually, but I didn't wanted to experience this kind of pain

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Here is an exemple of spritesheet I sliced in Unity, it is render to be animated at 30FPS, so it's a lot of sprites ^^", I tried to keep the sprite sized by power of 2 as well as the texture, but it left me with a lot of unused space. It is something I'd like to revisite later when I will have more knowledge and experience with the Engine..

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After setupping the state machine, I ended up with those result :

Generic movements :

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Crouching :

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Death :

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I am quite happy with this, I'll have to do additionnal animations for differents ingame situations, but for now I will focus on coding the game ^^
Here is my devlog showing this process :

 

Hi everyone!

I have been busy working on a second character for my game ! His name is Govo and he is a woodpecker!

Here is a bit of context :

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GAME PITCH :

Machines and technology took over. You are a disfonctionnal repair robot thrown to trash. On your journey, you'll will encounter wildlife to rescue from industrialisation and find ways to restore nature and biodiversity.

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EARLY CONCEPT :

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When I started looking for a secondary character, I knew that it would be a bird and that he possess some special abilities that will help our robot in his quest. So the first step was to gather some visual references of woodpeckers.

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GOVO'S CONCEPT ART :

Once I found a design I liked after a couple of hours doodling, I spent a bit of time to polish some concept design. I like doing this, because it build an attachement with the character I create, as I make sure they have their own personality.

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Then I created a couple of sprites to implements his first pass behaviors in Unity

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Here is a video with the full process and the theory I applied, let me know what you think !

Cheers