Ask HN: Graphics creation for games? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Graphics creation for games?

30 pointsSingAlong16 comments

Hey guys,

I just began to tinker with Pygame this morning. I have decided to do another hobby project using Pygame to create a nice little 2D game.

I took a look at some 2D games and also some indie games being sold. Most 2D games that are being sold now seem to have their graphics made using 3D programs (guess thats why they look 3D-ly).

Wondering if you guys here are using nice free drawing tools other than Blender (to make cartoonic graphics if not 3D)?

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For simple 3D modelling (and just the modelling, mind), I've become very much a fan of Wings3D. Ignoring the geeky bias I might have because it's written in Erlang, it has a very shallow learning curve and, in combination with Blender, you should be able to get some usable renders pretty quickly.

If you want to go witth straight-up 2D, though, I've found it fairly easy to get simple and stylish results from Inkscape. That way might be better anyway - why do what everyone else is doing?

Either way, I'd recommend just throwing something together quickly until you've got a good 'working model' - then you can either spend a bit more time on the graphics, or consult someone who knows their way around a wacom!

Which tool you use to design your graphics won't mean anything if you don't have some artistic ability. I speak from experience. That said, if you decide to go 2-D, I would highly recommend a vector graphics editor like Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator. I would argue that vector-based drawing, especially for the less experienced artist, is easier than bitmap drawing.

As recommended by J_McQuade, toss some images together at first and really focus on the actual code instead. Once the infrastructure is there, the images can easily be replaced.

I have two suggestions that are somewhat contrary to your question.

First, learn to draw. I recommend a book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. That and lots of practice.

Second, learn to produce and animate pixel art. You'll be surprised by the results you can get with the retro/nostalgia look. Google will find you plenty of tutorials.

While not 3d modeling, these approaches have low barriers to entry, and what you learn will help your future efforts artistically.

I'm going to speak in terms of techniques rather than tools. These are the best/fastest techniques I've found:

1. Procedural generation in your own code. People forget about this option because classical 2D games were too processing/memory-constrained to allow for anything but tiles loaded direct from ROM, but it's really great for environments. It works out to be very fast to produce because you can iterate and randomize and come up with a lot of variations without extra work, but you have to know what you're going for first. The download size savings is a bonus too.

2. Characters are cheapest to do with 3D only because of animation time. If you don't have a lot of anims, hand-drawn tends to give a more lively result, especially in low-res pixel art styles, but even then, painting over 3D will reduce your error rate. Invest in a Wacom if you want to get serious about drawing on computers, but start with the smallest size: you rarely need more.

3. When I need a clean cartoony look I drag out Inkscape and do a vector trace over the image I'm working with. This can take quite a while, but the results are really good when you go all-out and use two vectors per outline to give them variable width.

Thanks!

I was looking at Wascom as soon as arubin suggested me to do so, found address of local stores from their website.

I think Blender is your best bet for true 3D, if you're going to do the art yourself. But perhaps you don't really need full-on 3D-baked in your 2D game? If you're trying to commercialize it then yes, otherwise i'd say go with isometric or pixel art.

Many cartoons you see on tv (and cartoon-y games) are actually 3d rendered with a 'cel' shader.

For instance, check this out: http://www.crazycoder.co.za/wp/?page_id=36

Anyway, your best bet is to actually team up with an artist. Working with people you like is fun, and artists think differently than programmers, so it can be invigorating and expanding.

could speak more about cel shader? Thats exactly the kida of graphics what I'm looking to produce. I can work with Python, Ruby and surely learn blender if it requires. Any mores links on how to do this? The link you suggested was in C++

A cel shader is a technique for rendering 3d scenes. You still have to have your 3d models, which you might want to buy from http://www.3drt.com/ to get started. A more detailed explanation that should explain the theory to you is this: http://www.tjgalda.com/EducationAndTrain/Education%20and%20T...

Now, i dont think ou can write shaders in python, but you should be able to use glsl shaders in pygame. You shouldn't have to actually learn glsl for most common shaders, instead you can copy and paste from the internet! Example: http://www.lighthouse3d.com/opengl/glsl/index.php?toon3

thanks!!!

I just found a webpage with a python script to do cel shading. http://www3.sympatico.ca/emilio.aguirre/

and also a Blender toon shading tutorial here http://download.blender.org/documentation/oldsite/oldsite.bl...

I was just lurking on #gamedev and found a nice 2D graphics program called Graphics Gale (for pixel art). There's a free version and a shareware version. the shareware version is around $20

here's the link http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/

Anybody knows a better free alternative for this?

I have to say that I don't really like the 2D-sprites-from-3D-models look. I much prefer hand-drawn pixel graphics... but that might just be the taste of someone who grew up playing SNES instead of Xbox.

I use blender (for modeling and animation), Daz3d (for human figures and the large content library) and of course Photoshop.

I'm still in need of a good tool for combining multiple .tga frames into a single sprite sheet. It takes too long to do the task in Photoshop (load into a stack, change canvas size, distribute layers, resize) and I can't preview the animation until it's saved and built in the game engine.

Any suggestions for a tool (free or paid) that would help stitch multiple frames into a sprite sheet?

You can always go into Second Life, there are a bunch of cartoon avatar shapes you can start with then customize..and then take high res screenshots to process in GIMP or other

The models in Second Life are almost certainly protected by copyright. You can't use them in your game any more than you could use Mario or Gordon Freeman - even if you customize the avatar and add a funny hat.

This might help...

http://www.tdt3d.be/articles_viewer.php?art_id=99

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