Creating a "3D look" in 2D

[Kinmoku]

Hello! I am having a little difficulty with my VN's artwork at the moment... Basically, it's about an online video game and I wanted to have 3D model sprites for when you're in the game part of the story. It's about 50/50 in-game/ in real life, and the IRL half is drawn in 2D... like this:



So I thought I'd make my in-game characters in Blender. I've never used Blender before but soon warmed up to it and made something not too bad:



Problem is, it's taken SO much longer to do it this way, what with UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging etc. I have quite an ambitious project with lots of characters and I don't think I'm going about this the right way, especially as Renpy doesn't support 3D. I was wondering if anyone had any tips on how I could achieve an in-game look using 2D artwork instead?

Thank you, I appreciate any help.

[Carassaurat]

I'll be honest with you, my first thoughts upon reading the thread title were that you had gone absolutely bonkers. Since making something look convincingly 2D is for many people the Holy Grail of 3D modelling, doing it the other way around is a very strange idea. But I see where you're coming from, and yeah, UV mapping is a bit of a pain!

I think it'll depend a lot on what era of 3D you're trying to depict. With what is currently next-gen technology, there's little that obviously gives something away as being a 3D model from a still picture — except that no realtime 3D character ever has curly hair, because that's a transparency nightmare. Basically, the further back you travel in time, the more characteristic 3D is.

Polygonal edges are the obvious thing — like with the wings of your modelled character, there are only so many polygons you can use, and the results will always be that curves are not round. This is probably the easiest and most effective trick to pull. Another thing you might want to keep in mind is that fake subsurface scattering effects are very new and that ambient lighting still isn't where it ought to be either. Up until a while ago, models would have a tendency to shade to black or at least the same hue and saturation, with only different values. Absolutely dreadful. You could turn off anti-aliasing. AA isn't that new, but doing without it might give that sense of disconnect between the model and its background. The some goes for shadows; correct shadows have been around for a while, but having a darkened circle underneath the character or even no shadow at all is very typical of (earlier) realtime 3D.

If I were you, I'd pick something like the Nintendo 64 era to base things off of. Yeah, that is a long time ago and your telephone can probably play N64 games nowadays, but if it's about recreating the effect using 2D, I think it'd be most doable to recreate something like Mario 64 or Ocarina of Time with a polygonal lasso and bad shading. That even sounds like fun.

[Kinmoku]

Haha, yeah, I was thinking low poly count is the way to go. Even though the story is set in present day, I think low poly could still work. WoW uses low poly (although, with amazing textures) and other games use it too... some I've found are Biome, Before and Polycraft.

I guess somehow I have to find a way for it to look harmonious with my 2D art style. I really don't want it to clash.

[Carassaurat]

Before anything, I should like to mention that there are probably some techniques in 3D modelling that you could employ to save time if you're just looking to turn them into sprites. The Rigify add-on that Blender has can be used to assign a default rig to your model, and all you really have to do is adjust the proportions of the rig and maybe fix errors (like the wings). That ought to turn rigging into a manner of minutes. Which isn't to say it's a bad idea to draw them if you're handy with 2D, just that if you want to reconsider 3D, there are some lazy bum tricks.

If you really want to have one consistent style, you could also do it the same way Re:Alistair++ does it: use the same drawing technique, but with ludicrous proportions and hair styles for the game parts.

[Kinmoku]

That's a really good idea I just gave it a go and it was pretty quick, but due to the skirt, hair and wings, the rig has turned out pretty messy I think it would take some time to adjust it how I want it, so I may give it a miss.

I'm going to try painting a 3D model and see how it goes instead

I can see myself returning to Blender and doing it the long, hard way!

[Zylinder]

You could try screenshoting your model/rendering a snapshot and then paint over it. It would cut down the UV-ing and texturing time taken. If you look up Sam Nielson, he has some great tutorials on painting ambient occlusion and just making your stuff look really 3D in general (plus great brush sets!).

[Kinmoku]

Great idea! I've seen a few of these tutorials around so I'll give one a go and see how it looks