Creating new sprites
Thursday, July 15, 2021 - 02:48
Hi guys
I would like to create some items for Flare, but I'm not sure about what settings were used for creating the sprite sheet and have some questions.
- Is there any documentation of this or what software do you recommend for merging the single renders to one sprite sheet?
- Is anyone still actively creating new sprites for items or creatures?
- Where can I find the newest blender files / Is the flare-rpg github still being updated?
Cheers,
Skyzor
Attachments:
have a look at this:
https://opengameart.org/forumtopic/new-enemy-versions-for-flare
But yes, the Flare community is kind of active and new art/mods are being made. Github is up-to-date, you can get the .blend files (base models) from there, also have a look at the latest posts, theres a lot of info in those helping newcomers. Sadly noone sat to make a full tutorial.
Does anyone take commissions to make high quality sprites and art assets for Flare?
I have a history of paying people to develop mechanics / parts / assets of games. I would be open to collaborate / pay talented people via paypal to increase motivation / make cool things. I am currently paying for a tank game in Unity but my coder friend is gearing up for a full time job. Which will eat up his time being and hopefully it goes well so he can go from cashier to full time AAA game developer. So with that going on my coder friend might have his upcoming extra time eaten up. So I might have some extra money to invest into Flare assets for myself and all of the community. I asked Rubberduck about making some waterfalls but Rubberduck is currently busy with cool isometric hide / leather nomad art assets: https://opengameart.org/comment/92462#comment-92462 .
Also SKYZ0R do you think you could covert / make compatible / add on to your awesome character sprites to work like Clint Bellanger's Hero / Heroine Sprites in Flare https://opengameart.org/content/isometric-hero-and-heroine ? If anyone is interested I can be found quite frequently on Discord (with the rest of my game developer friends) via: Matthew#3194
@Danimal: Thank you for the hints, they surely were helpful.
@WithinAmnesia: Converting the sprites to Flare shouldn't be a problem at all. Flexible objects like clothes or armor are a little more difficult than non-flexible objects like weapons, which can be weighted to a single bone in the armature.
I actually rendered a random sword for Flare, see attachment of the original post. I wasn't sure about the sprite sheet settings though, because Blender's output are separate pictures.
But I'm not happy with the results or the animations in general:
Eventhough the Flare character sprites are awesome, no doubt about that, I don't understand why the original creator went for animations with so few frames (melee swing has only 4!). If I had enough time and motivation, I would like to remake the whole character including all the gear with more frames than that. This is very important for cloth animations (see white mage casting in the attachment) or rigid body animations (see flail swing), but also particle simulations like the fire spell (which I was forced to animate with only 8 frames and it doesn't really look good).
I also was forced to render everything with hard alpha around the edges, because the game I made them for uses the bmp format which doesn't support transparency. (The pngs had to be converted to bmp)
In the submission I posted, most of the animations have 8-12 frames, which I wasn't happy about either. But there were limits for the (very old) game engine I created these sprites for / toolsets to convert them. Also the rendering size of 148x130 is somewhat limited, because it doesn't allow the use of big weapons like halbers or pikes, or for example riding animations.
Fact is, I am done with my project and am looking for something new. As of now I'm trying to create a tileset for Godot and see further after that, because I haven't created tile sets before and so far only am experienced in character / gear animation, but it shouldn't be a big problem at all.
In the other post you asked if I have a website with my work. Sadly, I didn't update my deviant art page for years, but I've worked on a few projects, and here are some random images of my work:
- https://media.moddb.com/cache/images/games/1/26/25337/thumb_620x2000/Alt...
- Here I just started with concept art: https://www.deviantart.com/cliroj and also https://media.moddb.com/cache/images/games/1/26/25337/thumb_620x2000/The...
I also do digital sculpting and 3D print my stuff. I started 3D modeling / animating stuff myself just recently (2019).
Sorry for the long post. :D
Cheers,
Skyzor
SKYZ0R Is it possible to get the source files to convert the camera angle to fit with the conventional isometric 2.5D Diablo 2-like game assets supported by the Flare game engine?
I am not sure what your stance is with making new assets. Although maybe somehow if the source for the animations was shared (are they .blend ?) the camera angle could be adjusted and the sprite animation tileset could be rendered again; but to match the camera angle of the Flare assets.
If a remaster / re-render with Flare matching camera angle was somehow done it could create a compatible set of assets to go along with the preexisting body of Flare assets. Also maybe with new rendering methods (and or lack of restrictions) it could fix the transparency to create a cohesive set of assets that could easily mesh with the preexisting body of work.
I am not sure what you want to do currently.
I am hoping to find / make more art assets based upon the conventional isometric 2.5D Diablo 2-like game supported by the Flare game engine.
I hope somehow a bunch of talented people can work together and make some new cool assets for Flare:-).
@WithinAmnesia: I'll have to look into how the Flare animations work and run some tests once I get some spare time. Then I will report back. :)
Yes, I have the files (they are .blend), but don't feel comfortable releasing those.