Drawing vs Rendering Pixel Art

[gstv87]

there used to be a software a while ago, that exported .OBJ formats of multiple creatures.
I can't for the life of me remember how to search for it.
if that's the art style you're going for, that's simple cell shading. Any decent software like blender, cinema or 3d studio should be able to handle it.

if animation is the issue, there's tons of free biped samples laying around. I downloaded a pack a while ago, and still haven't been able to fully work with it, it's like 200 animations. The main thing with it, is that it doesn't fully fit my characters, it's more cartoony than realistic.
that's the big problem with bipeds and bone structures: more often than not, they're out of scale and need to be restructured, which is a ton of work if you don't know what you're doing.

 

[Frostorm]

if that's the art style you're going for, that's simple cell shading. Any decent software like blender, cinema or 3d studio should be able to handle it.

Yes, cell shading! That's the term I was looking for. I actually installed Blender last night too, so I'm going to start watching all the YouTube videos/tutorials on the subject lol.

that's the big problem with bipeds and bone structures: more often than not, they're out of scale and need to be restructured, which is a ton of work if you don't know what you're doing.

Yea, I definitely can't go with realistic body proportion. Something more stylized like in Warcraft would suit me better.

Edit: I found this video that shows a cool snippet of what he did w/ it:

 

[Sharm]

It feels less like you're wondering if this will work the way you want, and more like you just want to do it and are hoping someone tells you it's a great idea. If that's the case, do a small test run for each creation style and try it out, you'll probably figure out which one is better for you before you finish. I mean, it's going to result in some wasted effort, but sometimes you have to go down the wrong path a little ways to move down the right path more quickly, and it doesn't seem like you believe the people saying that it's not going to be less work.

I think that if you're more comfortable doing 3D than 2D this might be a better option for you, but don't expect it to be drastically easier. It's just moving the work around to something you can do better, the effort might be less but the workload is the same. There's pros and cons for each way of doing things, and finding the most efficient method is more about finding what suits you and your game than finding the most efficient method for everyone. For me, doing 3D and pixelating from there would be slower with poorer results than just animating pixel art from scratch, but that's also because my 3D skills are extremely basic at best and I'm pretty good at pixel art. Definitely play to your strengths when creating things.

Gotta admit though, I have no idea why you thought all those animations you want to do are simple.

 

[Frostorm]

Oof I recently put art/graphics on the backburner, but am now forced to tackle this issue once again.

It feels less like you're wondering if this will work the way you want, and more like you just want to do it and are hoping someone tells you it's a great idea.

I suggested this method mostly due to cost. I've talked to one of the pixel artists on the classified subforum and came up w/ an estimate of around ~$250 per character w/o all the attack/cast animations, so it would just be 4 directional walking and idle. Adding animations would easily double that figure. And that's 1 character! While window shopping for 3D assets, I found the price ranges per character to be anywhere from $30-70.

For example...

3D model Orc Berserk Tarkoman | CGTrader

3D model Orc Berserk Tarkoman orc warrior berserk fantasy character monster, ready for 3D animation and other 3D projects

www.cgtrader.com

For me, drawing it myself, whether 2D or 3D is equally challenging and pretty much out of the question. I guess my question all along was really: Where should I spend my money?

But drawing pixel art from scratch or editing existing assets is the norm, I get that. This is why I posed this question; because it's a risk and I wanted to see if anyone has attempted such a risk for an RM project.

Basically, there's no place I can just "buy" premade pixel art characters that fit my project's characters. (Does anyone have Orc Werewolf or Elven Vampire sprites laying around? lol) While the library of assets available for 3D is practically endless.
Hence my 2 options are:

• Commissioning pixel art or...
• Buying already made 3D models

I never had any intention of creating any 3D objects from scratch. That, as well as drawing pixel art from scratch, is simply out of my skill range atm.

 

[Dopan]

i am currently working on something similar for a similar reason..

after making sprites that carry weapons , i am trying to make sprites that use weapons..
here is an editor image

and 1 image with swords that works for default man sprites.. i cuted out some sword part for copy over, in order to not have to replace the hands
----

----
and the swords that are copyed under the char:


i am planing to do this for tall chars aswell, but i will need more time till i have enough images for sharing an asset img pack

The swords images shown above are only for the first image where they carry the weapons, but im planing to add other images aswell


and this is the char image



Edit ( about crusader 3d char)
i used 1 free 3d model as char and that was a lot of work making the char sprite with 15x4 frames..

Edit2
this video shows the 1 animation example from the editor image above
/(swing sword down)