this looks really cool - and it doesn’t even require a plugin - all one needs is the animation + texture + normals map
This looks very cool but I think the system does not fit the philosophie of 2D-Gaming.
It is more comfortable to operate with 3D-Objects and toon shaders or just to pay attention to atmospherical pixel painting.
This program is like the idea to tune up a simple bicycle with a 1000PS motor instead to buy a harley.
I can’t say I agree - as a seasoned pixel artist, I think it’s bloody clever and will prove extremely useful. I’ve used normal mapping on sprites more than a few times, and good results can be tricky to get (to the standard you’re usually after)… GL shading isn’t especially flattering either if you’re after an old-school look and feel.
Even if you only ever use directional lighting (so you don’t need the moody point lighting as in the examples), it opens up the ability to have, for example, different lighting schemes between levels and scenes. If you’ve ever created a game with literally thousands of frames of animation, you’ll appreciate the additional flexibility, and not having to decide everything about your sprite and environment shading up front.
They’ve definitely got my cash, no question.
Interesting.
Interesting indeed. BTW imaginaryhuman this is the first post I seen you with so few words…normally you write a book 
So much was said by what I didn’t say
This could have a lot of fun uses. I especially dig the lighting of scanned drawings. That could really create a unique look for a game.
Looks very interesting.
Haha, sweet. I’ve wondered a few times what kind of effect you could get with normal-mapped pixel art and some standard lights, and now I know the answer. Super cool.
Something I’ve seen overlooked in the benefits of such a technique: 2d skeletal animation.
2D skeletal animation is pretty awesome, but it’s also a pretty different style to hand-crafted sprites.
Right, but you could normal map the pieces and then have them correctly lit during animation. Which would make the 2d skeletal look a lot nicer and allow for a wider range of styles for it. The normal mapping doesn’t have to be limited to pixel art (see their ballpoint example).
Heck, you might even be able to use pixel art for the pieces if you can get the lighting and alignment right ('cause otherwise pixel art has never really been suited to skeletal animations).
Unity guyz c’mon pay this guy!
You could probably do something similar to this using my Refract 2D asset… create a distortion map based on a blurred version of the sprite and it will appear 3D-ish as the lightmap moves.
This. Looks. Awesome.
(and timely… 
)
The technique itself isn’t new, but it’s the first time I’ve seen someone do something useful with it (aside from some academics a few years ago scanning 3D relief mapped South American ruins…quite cool if you can find it).
A lay walkthru on manually getting normals from lit plates in photoshop:
http://www.zarria.net/nrmphoto/nrmphoto.html
@Pix10, thanks for that info, that’ll probably wind up less computationally expensive than using the trig I was before for figuring out the values for each pixel (wound up writing a tool for it last night).
We’re all about the polygons at Disparity but this plugin is still bloody impressive.
What I like about this technique is how it’s completely art-driven. The sprite artist doesn’t have to futz around with normal maps or psuedo-depth textures - they just paint the character lit however they want. I imagine this opens up a lot of artistic potential.
You could do this with normal mapping, which it basically is. It’s just the way the normal map is generated that is different. Instead of modelling the character from 3D polygons you’re modelling a fixed side-view of what would otherwise be polygons and then faking the 3D.
Yes, but this automates the process and requires no 3D tools, which makes things a lot easier.