2D Sprites or 3D Models? [poll added]

[Tuco]

Animated 2D. I don't know much about these things but I'd assume it'd cost less and take less space than 3D

Both your assumptions are just wrong.

make 3D models of characters with tier armors and weapons, apply effects, convert the 3D animation in successive sprites to render various actions, make a nice 2D background, fixed camera at 31 degrees

So, in short, the *worst* of both worlds.

[Grotesque]

when somebody mentions 3D, I think of this, which is shit:



and with W2 budget, that's what we'll get if 3D

[Tuco]

when somebody mentions 3D, I think of this, which is shit:

[img]http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~ecb44/wd3images/warcraft3-2002.jpg[/img*]

and with W2 budget, that's what we'll get if 3D

Baseless assumption.

[Mort2]

I still think that the image on the first page should be change to something more representative of how a 3D models look in a top down game with locked camera. Because no matter how much you'll correct them, those post will get lost in the thread post count and the first post will continue to mislead people.

For example you can, google some FOnline image a fan created replica of FO, that use 3d models and see if you can find the differences(because there are big one developing wise infavor of 3d)

EDIT: also I assume that the only way to allow the game to be really mod-able is to use 3d.

[Smejki]

when somebody mentions 3D, I think of this, which is shit:

http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~ecb44/wd3i ... 3-2002.jpg

and with W2 budget, that's what we'll get if 3D

congratulation on your very low science skill

[dmazz]

Should look like Commando's 3 (2D in 3D engine), but with two major differences. To save money/time 3D character/creature models. And the second is 3D structures underneath a 2D overlayed image. (for combat in buildings and real time shadows)

So there should be a fourth option in the poll, 2D with 3D engine.

High quality 2D prerendered backgrounds and foregrounds are faster and less expensive than high quality textures for 3D objects and structures. And this choice is available because there won't be a 3rd person or first person camera viewpoint.
With 3D effects like particle effects (weather), lighting, shadow, water, trees and grass. It will look pretty awesome.

One problelm would be death animations for 3D characters. But rag doll physics, blood, internal organs, slow motion and limb severing should be enough. And another problem would be seeing your 3D character up close with equipment, there's not enough time and money to make detailed attractive 3D mannequin. So just use a 2D mannequin for now.

Lastly, 3D character details, animation quality and gore effects can easily be improved upon by modders. And cut and pasting 2D background structures and items, can be done by modders in photoshop.

[mercy]

High density 3D models rendered to 2D sprite animation could really save on hard disk space, because the characters are small, viewed from a distance in some arbitrary-angle isometric "top-down" view. The sprites could be compressed to hell, noisy and still look good.

When we made game for the Wii, one programmer simply placed pixelated water particles - without any filters - onto a fountain. From every angle and distance the water looked so good, because the Wii hardware instantly puts moire on every striped, dense brick or otherwise dense geometrical texture pattern. Compression (for super-small sprite-size) and the inevitable noise from this process would create the equal of a high-quality post-effect in a 3D game on characters, because they would look like noisy and slightly blurred, giving characters movie quality look.

This effect - consequence of compression - can be observed in many game trailers and top-notch 3D engines nowadays began to blur background and apply compression on every texture. Half of the time these effects look so good. The technique can be used purposefully to create an awesome movie-look, by degrading texture resolution, when things are only seen from a distance. An isometric engine only shows objects from a distance.

That said, I really hope inXile surprises us with a breathtaking, original look, and good creative graphics on the environment and characters. If the game graphics will retain somehow the quality of Andrée Wallin's awesome work, there will be heaven for fans.
Looking at the game I don't want to react with Ugh!..

[Stavorguin]

2D animated sprites all the way. Plus painted backgrounds like Infinity Engine games. Benefits for this are:

- Graphics age well in 2D, not at all in 3D. Look at Neverwinter Nights, it's fugly.
- 2D means less demanding system requirements. No need to render all those fancy shaders, everything is baked.
- Gore! Gore is glorious in 2D. Its looks silly in 3D.
- Less expensive. Prerendering beautiful 2D means there is no need for a top of the line 3D engine.
- Vintage: we all want this game to be old school, so let's keep it like in the good old days!

In the end I think 3D should be avoided at all costs because with a meager budget 3D would look terrible. Look at the abomination (graphically wise) that is the new Jagged Alliance.

[Banana]

I demand pixel art, not pre-rendered 3D graphics, like the Fallout screenshot posted as "animated 2D sprites". EGA would be an added bonus.

[gool]

- Less expensive. Prerendering beautiful 2D means there is no need for a top of the line 3D engine.

There's no need for (or expectation of) top-of-the-line anything, and prerendering entails making 3D models of everything, anyway. I imagine that could easily become more expensive than wholly 2D or 3D.

hand-drawn 2D > 3D > prerendered 2D.

I demand pixel art, not pre-rendered 3D graphics, like the Fallout screenshot posted as "animated 2D sprites". EGA would be an added bonus.

Absolutely this.

[The_A_Drain]

- Less expensive. Prerendering beautiful 2D means there is no need for a top of the line 3D engine.

There's no need for (or expectation of) top-of-the-line anything, and prerendering entails making 3D models of everything, anyway. I imagine that could easily become more expensive than wholly 2D or 3D.

hand-drawn 2D > 3D > prerendered 2D.

I demand pixel art, not pre-rendered 3D graphics, like the Fallout screenshot posted as "animated 2D sprites". EGA would be an added bonus.

Absolutely this.

There is a huge underestimation of just how much time and expense is in 2D art nowadays, especially art that has to look good at a high resolution.

I occasionally have to pay freelancers for some 2D work, and it's freakin' expensive when you tell them it's got to look good at 1080p. Less so for an iPhone game or etc, but still pretty hefty. Animation sends the cost through the freakin' roof. Whereas with pre-rendered 3D it's a great deal easier and, importantly, faster. Even moreso with straight up 3D.

3D on the other hand, for a start there's more people in the field doing it which makes the competitive aspect more prevalent and you can get it done cheaper. But secondly it's so much more flexible that it's much much much cheaper when things go wrong, or need to be changed. Which happens. Always.

In the Fallout example, aren't the characters 3D pre-rendered? I know the talking heads are, at least.

3D also makes it easier to use prefabs and re-use content than it is in 2D. It's definitely doable in 2D for sure, but it's more effort, time and cost nowadays.

The only reason 3D used to be so expensive was because it was such a specialist field that not many artists populated, and the tools for building the assets themselves were torturous to use, to the point I know a few PS1/PC developers who were literally modelling by typing out the vertex locations by hand because the software was so unreliable.

Edit: A really good example was Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix. There was 2 programmers and a director and producer working on that (or something to that effect, I think it was 2 programmers anyway) the rest was solely artists, and bearing in mind they had the original animations to work from (with very few frames per anim) as reference the project still went massively over budget and took so long it was almost canned. And even then the fans weren't happy with the artwork.

Edit: There also seems to be some confusion about pre-rendered 3D and cost. It's still cheaper than 2D, primarily because the quality of the 3D models don't actually matter too much, at least in terms of mesh flow and crush points, etc because they can be incredibly high-poly. It saves an awful lot of time on animation compared to 2D because let's say you want 8 different angles your character can face. In 2D, you have to draw each rotation angle from scratch and then animate each frame in the animations you need for those views (for each kind of weapon and armor, also) whereas with 3D pre-rendered you just move the camera about and make sure the lighting matches. The animation only needs to be made once, and just rendered out from the different viewpoints.

[Smejki]

Plus painted backgrounds like Infinity Engine games.

these were prerendered, man

[Thorium]

I dont realy care, but it has to be animated.

I would go with 3D models for the reason that they are cheaper and open up more possiblitys. Many people think 2D is easier and cheaper but thats not the case. On 2D you have to render hundreds of frames for just one sprite and even than are not able to cover all possible appearances. It's not only equipment it's also the transition between two different animations or the blending of two (or even more) different animation. That all needs to be prerendert and it will also take a lot of disk space. On 3D you just need a routine for animation blending and you are good.

[Stavorguin]

Plus painted backgrounds like Infinity Engine games.

these were prerendered, man

Are you sure? If so, it's at least a mix of pre renders and 2D, look at the trees and grass, definitely not pre rendered

[Smejki]

There might have been some sor of manual postpprocessing I am not doubting this.

[Tetraptous]

3D, regardless of perspective. It's easier to animate and extend, these days the computational cost is low, and perhaps most importantly, it's resolution independent. That means I can play the game 20 years from now on my wall-size "retina" display panel without resorting to imperfect emulation, and even today I can play on any wacky sized screen with no issues. There's absolutely no point in pre-rendering 3D models into sprites these days; that's a technique whose time has passed as we can get better results rendering on the fly these days. That said, my opinion on the subject isn't all that strong--whatever is easiest to implement and most compatible with the design of the game.

[The_A_Drain]

3D, regardless of perspective. It's easier to animate and extend, these days the computational cost is low, and perhaps most importantly, it's resolution independent. That means I can play the game 20 years from now on my wall-size "retina" display panel without resorting to imperfect emulation, and even today I can play on any wacky sized screen with no issues. There's absolutely no point in pre-rendering 3D models into sprites these days; that's a technique whose time has passed as we can get better results rendering on the fly these days. That said, my opinion on the subject isn't all that strong--whatever is easiest to implement and most compatible with the design of the game.

A wild Quantum Computing appeared. Suddenly whacky emulation is required

But on a serious note, this is correct although there's a few things which generally might becomes issues, particularly with things like alpha blending/particles, depth sorting etc and how graphics cards handle those and how this might (unlikely now, tbh) change.

It's not going to be much of an issue for a game made now I suspect, but for games made earlier it was a pretty big problem with bringing them to more modern machines. Mostly though this effects console games, I have to say. For example the PS1 didn't have a depth buffer by default, one had to be made manually, porting that would be a nightmare so that's why we're seeing a lot of PS1 games left off of ports/re-releases etc for HD 'packs'. Same goes for some of the custom shadow and alpha blending tech in Silent Hill games, etc. My suspicion is that the code for that was either too difficult to port to the modern machines or that it would require significant re-work of the actual assets that make up those parts of the game. So unfortunately, fog at least, was left out of the HD port.

This if a little bit off-topic haha, sorry. Being resolution independent is a huge huge benefit.

[dmazz]

Forget about the character models, the majority agree with 3D. No 2D animation.

What I want to know is 2D environments vs 3D environments. Neverwinter Night 2 vs Commando's 3 (2006 vs 2003). I know the majority prefer Commando's environments. But from the sounds of it we'll be getting NW2, not terrible. But disappointing for sure. (at least a texture upgrade pack will be possible in the future)

A big difference between this http://commandoshq.net/Images/Screensho ... os2_14.jpg (An 11 year old game I might add)
and this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82TSz2_UDxU

[Gizmo]

Plus painted backgrounds like Infinity Engine games.

these were prerendered, man

Are you sure? If so, it's at least a mix of pre renders and 2D, look at the trees and grass, definitely not pre rendered

There seems to be a misconception that 3d art does not incorporate hand drawn [2d] textures. But it does, and can make use of several 2D textures at once. It is certainly possible to hand illustrate grass and scan it, (or even photograph real grass), and use those textures with (on) a 3D model. It's not required to model blades of grass and have the PC render individual shadows for a flat green colored mesh.

** An example: This is a 3D turkey I made for a Fallout 3 mod. It's a simple mesh and texture; the texture is a mix of hand drawn and photos. [mostly photos]

[krellen]

This is a 3D turkey I made for a Fallout 3 mod.

No offence, but that is ugly as hell. I have never liked the look of 3D models. They're just UGLY.