Lemma Soft Forums

I hope this doesn't sound too complicated. I've been trying to figure out how to use rigged 3d models for character sprites, but there isn't much information on it. The aim is to create animated customization character sprites similar to live2d. Basically having a character model that has bones which can control the model by loading poses or animations.
It seems to be possible. I've found somebody who has done it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etJovr7wQiI

It's connected to this post also:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=42512&p=443641&hili ... al#p443641

I'm really grateul to sawer/bitsawer for their work here. I've managed to get opengl set up and a static 3d room to display.
Unfortunately the github page doesn't have demos of the model in the video where there are shapekeys and bones like you would see in a 3d modelling program such as blender for example.
Generally I'm pretty decent at working with and understanding renpy, and I have a lot of experience with 3d modelling in blender. I would really like to be able to export a 3d model mesh that has some sort of bone/armature structure attached to the mesh for movement. It would be really useful to be able to use shapekey animation to adjust facial expressions.
I know alternatives would be to just use live2d, a movie clip, or use rendered frame by frame animation. In my experience these alternatives offer a lot of limitations and issues. Live2d is probably the best alternative, but is still more limited than using blender to create a rigged 2d skeletal animation. Not to mention the license thing and that it seems newer versions can't be used without internet connection. Movie clips and pre-rendered frame by frame animation are very inefficient and take up a lot of memory. They can be very tedious and time consuming to produce. If you for example, have a small mistake on the character or want to change a detail then you have to redo the whole movie clip(s) and re-render all the animations. It's not as practical as a 3d model where you can simply edit and update the textures quickly and easily to fix those kinds of issues. A low poly 3d model or rigged 2d skeletal animation made in a 3d modelling software will 9/10 be much less memory than a movie clip or loading potentially 1000s of images for a few short animations.

Any help with this at all would be really really great, thanks!

That thread you linked is fascinating, and already far beyond anything I know how to do.

Thank you. I am trying my best to decipher opengl, python, render etc. but with my little programming experience, I'm so out of my depth its not even funny. It's unfortunate 3d models haven't been explored much in renpy.
Here is a link explaining that renpy has 3d model capabilites(which I know already lol) but it isn't as extensive as I'd hoped.
https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/model.html

the bitsawer solution is 2d not 3d, if you want to do something similar just use live2d

lobotomista wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 23, 2022 6:15 pm

the bitsawer solution is 2d not 3d, if you want to do something similar just use live2d

The linked youtube video appears fairly convincing that its using 3D rendering, as stated.

I've searched as much as I could into bitsawers work as well as a game called offcuts which seems to be the game demo of the 3d model in the video.
This link here even says it's basically imported a blender scene into renpy.(the website appears to be nsfw btw)
https://f95zone.to/threads/offcuts-v0-3 ... st-2178621

I've been looking at the code and it absolutely is using 3d from the way the import data is handled. Yeah I could use live2d, but it's a bit disappointing that it's basically the only option for a more interactive animation/sprites. Especially since it's not exactly free like Blender is. I have used both live2d and blender to create animated character sprites. I find that Blender is just more efficient, quicker and less limited in functionality. A sprite that would take an hour in live2d would take ~15 minutes in blender. Not to mention live2d more or less is like a 3d mesh anyway, just being animated using a different software.

From the look of the code from bitsawer and the offcuts game it seems it could be used to import 3d models, but I would need help from someone familiar with opengl, python and 3d model data. I just don't really know where to look however, and would appreciate any help or advice.