I was looking around, but couldn’t find anything covering my specific question. We are about create a 2.5D game. That means a fully 2D simulating space, 3D impression created by its careful setup of 2D assets. However, all assets and avatars are 2D.
I am a bit unsure how to approach the animation of the graphic assets and also how to create the base graphics. We want the avatars to move in 8 directions.
Which method is the best ? Sprites or with bones ? What software is recommendable ? I am intrigued by Live2D or Creature-Kestrelmoon (That would be the bone approach). But I find no tutorial materials. Most are about platformer like, means from the side. Did anyone solve this already and has experience ? Could anyone aim me at a tutorial that shows an efficient animation method for isometric games ?
I saw that Creature-Kestrelmoon allows to apply bvh files. But again there is a Platformer view from the side shown. Theoretically this would be the best approach, especially since I am pretty ok to create bvh files for 3D characters. I am not sure though if I can define the direction of an animation etc. After all the animation part must be shown in the right “perspective”. I write perspective like that, since isometric has not a real perspective, but still it describes it best in this case.
So if anyone could aim me in the right direction. Right now I don’t really know where to move.
Thanks a lot for every post to shed some light in my dilemma
Agree with TonyLi.
I would go full 3D for all assets in creation and animation and convert into 2D if needed.
3D will take more time up front but will save more time than lost when animating and revising/iterating assets for the game.
Sigh, I hoped to avoid the “frame per frame” thing
Seems so outdated to me. I really hoped that this bvh thing could do the job. I mean it is totally possible to do and I assumed someone programmed it. Frame per frame is so before I was even born, lol. Well alas, so be it then, frame per frame, sigh. That is easily 80 frames for a simple walk … per avatar !
With an isometric view, you’re not going to be able to do bone-based animation in 2D because of the perspective. However, you could do bone-based animation in 3D. Why not make a 3D game with an isometric perspective? Or use a side perspective if you want to use bone-based 3D animation.
Again - agree with Tony ^ the sticking point is sprite based anim - so use bone based 3D animation and develop a pipeline where it works for your needs. The end result is really frame per frame anyway even with bones ‘kind of’ the bones are still coded to move per frame based on input from the player - so the number of frames playing in the game with the number of frames in the bones based animation = frame to frame animation. But I’m sure you meant sprite based animations.
Unless you are interested in doing physics based animation it will still end up frame per frame - essentially.
