What about a free 3D characters resource?

[TerranRich]

Heh. Would anybody be interested in a collection of 8-directional 3D pre-rendered character walking animations? The game they'd be used in would have to be pre-rendered 3D of course, unless you wanted it otherwise. I could pop out about one a day, and have all sorts of characters, from vikings to knights, to sluts and pimps.

Who'd be interested?

[undergroundling]

I think that would be quite awesome, personally.  Although I'm not really likely to use 3d in my games (although if I became more proficient in it, who knows?), I think it would be an awesome resource to have available.

BTW, what program do you use for all your characters/backgrounds?  I saw your screenshots and LOVED them!  I'm downloading the intro now  

But, yeah, good idea

- Bryan

[LGM]

HELL YEAH!

[Eero]

Yeah!
PS: Would sluts be naked? :

[GarageGothic]

I believe it's Poser 4 for the characters, am I right? With the additional Michael and Victoria characters, not sure which version of those. I think Poser is great for adventure game characters because it's so easy to create different view angles for the same animation (question for terranRICH: Do you turn the camera or the character when doing the different angles? Is there any easy way of rotating the whole animation rather than doing it frame by frame).

The problem with Poser is that unless you put a lot of work into custom textures, morph, clothing etc. you end up with that classic Poser cookie cutter-art look.

Edit: Not to put down terranRICH's great initiative, but keep in mind that it would be nearly impossible to create additional animations for the characters without Poser and not have it look wrong. So you'll probably need to make more than just walking animations. At least speech anims, and maybe some kind of pick up/using animation.

[TerranRich]

Ooh, well this looks to be a well-received idea. Okay, GarageGothic, point well taken. So what would be needed for each character?

Walking animations
Pick up from Floor animations
Speech (will this be LucasArts full-body or Sierra talking head, or maybe even both?)

What else?

[undergroundling]

The Lucas-style speech is probably the most used, although Sierra talking heads might be more popular if there was a nicely rendered talking head to use, so thats a tricky question.

But I agree with GG that there should be more than just talking.  In addition to the pick up from floor and the speech, maybe you could make different animations specific to the character type.  For example, if you were making a slut, she could have an idle animation looking like a hooker on a street corner.  Similarly, if you were to have a knight, there should be some sort of sword-wielding animation.  So maybe have the standard walk/talk/pick up animations plus an additional custom one for each character.  Just an idea.

- Bryan

[DragonRose]

You could also have some sort of anmiation where the character moves his/her/its arm forward, which could be used for lots of things: opening or closing a door, picking up something from a table or counter, moving a chair, hitting somebody very lightly...

As for talking, my understanding is that if you have a front view of a lucas-arts type talk animation, you could just blow it up and crop it so you just see the head. Bam! Sierra talk animation!

I'm all in favour of this, TerranRICH!  Yes to be pleasing!

[juncmodule]

This is a bizarre request but, I am looking for about a 50x15 character (approx. dimensions of facing forward view). I want one male and one female naked...or at least only wearing bikinis (so I can add clothes later). If you can do this quickly that would be super awesome. I have been trying to do it with poser but the size reduction kills it and makes it look like poo.

Additional animation suggestions:

pick up put down: High, Waist level, on floor
die: fall back, fall forward
stand up/sit down
personally I like lucas style standing and talking while moving arms.

EDIT: You know...I was just thinking...we seem to have a few people here who enjoy playing with 3D stuff. How about doing another insta-game pack with just 3D stuff. Does anyone enjoy doing basic backgrounds...? Maybe I will try to throw something together with Bryce 3D and post it here.

thanks,
-junc

[Eero]

I love doing realistically-textured basic advanced 3D backgrounds...

[Quintaros]

What I'd really be interested in is a really good template of a walk cycle.  I'd prefer to make the specific characters myself but just find animation somewhat difficult to achieve so I think generic male and female templates would be good for common animations.  I would then draw over the template on a separate layer and add some personality.

[TerranRich]

No,  no, no, this is not for requests. But now that you mention it, juncmodule, doing an all-3D InstaGame package would be neat.

I could make it a generic template, with blank scenery like landscapes, beaches, streets, etc. Also,  there could be random items also made in 3D. And don't forget some basic characters...in 3D!!!1!!111

Hmm, let me mull this over in my head to see if it's plausible.



EDIT:

Oh, by the way, before I forget, what different sizes do you want the walk cycles to be in? I was thinking about heights of 200, 150, 80, and 40. Is that okay? I can't tell what the widths will be just yet.

Also, for the first two sets, they will be nude (sans genitalia) male and female walk cycles without hair, clothes, or anything, so people can draw over them. Then, I'll just upload random things that I feel like uploading. I'll put it up on my home page for access as well. Expect those first two walk cycles by the end of this week, too.

[juncmodule]

Sorry didn't mean to make that sound like a request(using the word "request" was kind of a dumb way for me to approach that). I kind of thought it went along with what you were doing. More ideas or suggestions. I tried to draw/create stuff in Bryce...but, I just suck at it.

The stuff you said in your edit sounds super duper great, even if you don't do the whole 3D pack idea I think the community could really benefit from a nice set of character templates.

thanks!
-junc

[Hollister Man]

Actually, depending on how you do it, prerendered chars look pretty good.  I anim'd Connor for my remake, and he looked pretty good.  I just set my animation render to "current view settings," got him the right size, rendered, then I batch edited the frames in Photoshop.  Lock the background color (whatever it is,) anti-alias everything else.  This turned out very sierra-ish, with a realistic twist.  Sometimes it helps to cut and paste the head from one particular frame you like onto the others, so his face doesn't get contorted.  Remember, pixel-editing afterward is always possible, and reccommended.  

As soon as I get my new PC, Mask:Adventure will be back on schedule.  I finally found a top notch BG making tutorial, so I am happy as a flap.  I plan on using almost purely pre-rendered characters, so we'll see what happens.

[Evil]

It would be nice for a dummy. It would be great to be able to pick what they looked like. Clothing, gender, hight/weight, ect...

[Minimi]

I could be making that too, with my large knowledge on 3dmax and bryce ... but I prefer.. i guess others too, to make your own.. and not rip it from others! Otherwise its not totally my work!

[misterx]

Well I would also like to make my own characters, But what happens when someone like me who comes along who CANT draw, or use art packages very well?

Its a great idea, not only will it help the hundreds of people in my shoes, who dont have a single artist bone in their body to get started but will also help them learn basic moments..


Great idea, I say go for it!

[RickJ]

I have a suggestion as to the size of prerendered characters.  It seems to me that characters look much better when scaled down  than when scaled up.  With this in mind why not size characters for the foreground of a small 600x400 room?  In this way the character would be scaled down by AGS nearly all the time.

What do you think?  

[Hollister Man]

Actually, I rendered my characters at 2x what they would be on screen.  They looked good, even before this new anti-alias engine thingy.  I have never got a chance to check it out since then either.

[undergroundling]

So when can we expect these characters to be uploaded?  No rush, of course, I'm just curious  

I'm really looking forward to these character models and might even find a place to use them in a game sometime.  All in all, I think this will be a great resource.

No pressure or anything.