thank you, your response and link have all the answers I was looking for!
for my first game I am thinking of modeling and texturing my characters but pre rendering them in poses for sprite animation. can unity do that or should I try something like game maker? havent tried that in years but it was able to do sprite based in the past.
Please all newcomers stop making games!
Soon there will be no one to buy our games! We need to so something about it! 
Of course unity can do it. You just define a rectangle sprite as character controller and go with it. I have seen a WIP of a game that do similar things. Uh,got it. Here. Should I give you a quick potato Colcannon recipe? 
Get makehuman,it is free.Adjust parameter,export it.Import it to zbrush,dynamesh,make whatever sweet you want,retopolize,bake.In maya,setup a biped rig. Google for a nice “biped animation script for run cycle”.run it.There you got some nice animations. Now play it and convert it to sprite sheet. I don’t know how to do the last step but I am sure we can.
@Magico,processes of game development are inherently such that almost every newcomer is turned away by the ferocious tedious time sucking things. We should not worry about it Few person could tolerate these inferno.
He Steel, welcome to the world of game development.
Start really small and simple, write a 2D pong, then a 3D pong with some models you made i.e table, bats etc.
The important thing is to finish each game end to end.
Also write up a game design document for each game you make. Google for a template.
Then add some multiplayer to your games, hell even put them up on Kongregate or on the app/android stores to get that experience.
Once you’ve done that, start working on something a little more ambitious, like your game you want to make… then go from there…
Take it a step at a time, do 5-6 weeks of tutorials as well to broaden your knowledge.
Good luck
actually that part is easy, white background while rendering an animation. animation renders automatically creates a series of images sequentially numbered. thats your sprite sheet source.