Two threads around here have dealt with bottom-up pixel-art shading in the past. By "bottom-up", I mean a pipeline starting from a sprite, and generating a pseudo-3D shading after computing some normal mapping. I can't find the forum threads right now, but there're somewhere around, each of them dealing with a specific tool.
Now, there is this top-down approach: it starts from the 3D mesh in a real-time 3D game, and applies a pixel shader that makes it look like pixel-art.
http://initialsgames.com/main/?p=1360
That's interesting.
Cool!
The tools you're talking about are SpriteLamp (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=49542.msg636473589#msg636473589) and Sprite DLight (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=51337.0).
wohah. The final result at the end of the page looks pretty cool. Even the fingers look like you wouldn't have to tweak a lot.
I cloned Sprite DLight a few days ago because it's not free.
(http://i.imgur.com/Rszlbwk.png)
Beautiful right?
I managed to get pretty cool results.
ON:
(http://i.imgur.com/o8V3yP7.png)
OFF:
(http://i.imgur.com/uXHyzr3.png)
I'm interested to see how this could be used with AGS, dynamic lighting would be great but my brain couldn't think of a way to use it other then regions with different views!
that looks really good Calin, I envy your skills :/
You could maybe use normal mapping in a low res ags game with fairly small characters.
Otherwise, without shaders, it's just too computationally expensive.
Quote from: Calin Leafshade on Thu 19/02/2015 00:19:27
I cloned Sprite DLight a few days ago because it's not free.
I
demand to have this.
AwesomeBump is free: you can find it at awesomebump.besaba.com
Haven't tried it for sprites, only textures for Blender... but should work? :)
The new thing that these generators introduce is that they use the distance from the background to roughly determine the height of the sprite.
Now I'm even more blown away by this thread!
My work colleague was telling me about this shader today, I didn't believe him and kinda dismissed it like 'Oh, this guy probably doesn't know what real pixel art is', I figured the end result would be anti-aliased like mad, here I am looking at a turnaround sprite with my jaw on the floor. That wouldn't take much fixing up to look really nice! Finally my basic 3D skills will come in handle for something ;-D
That 3D plugins automatically reminds me of an article I read ages ago in regards to King of Fighters XII (and XIII) how they kinda cheated on the "sprite art" side of things and alot of the animation work was done via 3D programs and used a similar technique to get that sprite feel.
I'm a lazy, lazy man. Looks like I found a winner.
(http://i.imgur.com/laE9M.png)