3d art vs hand drawn art

[lordcloudx]

I prefer 2D

[electric]

3D is hard to do with characters because of the uncanny alley. However, I don't think it really applies to us much because we're generally trying to do the anime style, which actually avoids the uncanny altogether anyways.

There's the soft shaded figurine style.

sample-1d135d3dd0027874407733fbb7d377d6.jpg

Any chance you'd know where this pic came from ? The models are simpler than mine but they look better

Really nice examples you posted.

[delta]

In my opinion, the main point with the whole "3D lacks warmth"/"2D lacks precision" thing in our context is... you don't NEED precision for character art, especially if you're not among the cream of the crop of 3D artists. Abstraction is what cartoonish (and especially anime-style) art is all about, it exaggerates the few key points in faces (especially the eyes) and simplifies them into very basic forms. It's easy, this => expresses the emotion of happiness better than any 3D CG of less than very good quality. Our brains are hardwired to pick up simple patterns in expressions, so that will work beautifully, but if you're even the slightest bit off if you try more complexity it will immediately be perceived as unnatural. That is what the uncanny valley is all about.

btw, It's entirely possible to make 3DCG of human faces in a quality that is indistinguishable from photos these days, in the very top segment of 3D artists of course. But it's a ton of work.... and you could just go out and take a photo for far less effort.

[Samu-kun]

Any chance you'd know where this pic came from ? The models are simpler than mine but they look better

Really nice examples you posted.

http://danbooru.donmai.us/post/index?tags=tamekiti
http://danbooru.donmai.us/post?tags=3D& ... ult=Search

(NONE OF THESE LINKS ARE SAFE FOR WORK!)

[usul]

This makes me wonder why we don't see more games with photographed actors for the character art. You could shoot a bunch over green screen and edit them into a game afterwards. You don't even need to photograph your actors at the same time, and it would probably take very little time to shoot the range of emotions needed in a visual novel. You could even do a couple of costume changes while you're at it.

[electric]

Abstraction is what cartoonish (and especially anime-style) art is all about.

That's a good point, that's why theses models are better than mine. I'll just try again.

http://danbooru.donmai.us/post/index?tags=tamekiti
http://danbooru.donmai.us/post?tags=3D& ... ult=Search

(NONE OF THESE LINKS ARE SAFE FOR WORK!)

Thank you !

[Jake]

This makes me wonder why we don't see more games with photographed actors for the character art. You could shoot a bunch over green screen and edit them into a game afterwards.

I imagine most people on this forum don't have a setup (or knowledge) that makes it easy to do chroma-key, it's not so simple as just magic-wanding the background, usually.

Using photographs - however you cut them out from their backgrounds - has been suggested a couple of times before, but you still run into issues. You'd need to know people who fit the build, appearance and gender of your characters (and I doubt many forum regulars know a large number of cute Japanese girls, for example), and you'd need for those people to not mind having their likeness used in whatever game you're putting together, which could also be problematic.

[Aleema]

I was playing a game recently (commercial) that had a decent basic idea, but the game was 3D. And that just ruined the entire thing for me. If you're going to do 3D, you have to do it well, I think. It needs to be as fluent as it can be to match real life and such. But what really did that game in is that it was painful to have to watch the character rendering slowly walk from one point to the next, repeat the same jerky animations ... If the game was 2D, it would've been darling. But it wasn't, so my I quit after I got a headache. =\

I really prefer the beauty of traditional art, personally. 3D rendering lack a touch of humanity in my eyes, but to others I can see how it looks more polished. And of course, it's a very good alternative if you're not good at drawing.

[EmP|ty]

99% of the time I prefer 2d drawn...but there are some 3d ones that look good, it's just very hard to get the look right..

[Yorkie]

Depends... Art in most cases has been about making things as real as possible (including photography). That first picture was a crapzilla poser picture, I never liked poser but with enough renders and tricks you can make something that's surely eye catching. Technically I've kinda sorta worked with it and it's possible to almost emulate the 2-d feel even though it's obvious that the work was done in a 3d program due to the lighting and at times the lines. Also, preference on 2-d vs 3-d varies depending on the style, some story lines are better in 3d than 2d.

Technically for a lot of gaming I don't mind 3-d (well, what other alternative, really?) but when it's based on making the characters look as realistic as possible sometimes it's not as pretty. I'm sure in a few more years the 3d gaming world will be more convincing since I believe realism is achieved more in movies and videos than in games.

Okami is a good example of 3d work that's done right mainly because it has a 2d feel to it.

[lorddon]

Unless I could get my renders to look as good as Scott Christian Sava's, I wouldn't even attempt it:

[Adorya]

Lightning need a bit of work on this but still it's a lot of work to just go at this step

[Guest]

With regards to 2D vs 3D in gaming, it's more the philosophies of the developers that give me trouble rather than the art style themselves.

2D games look charming, problem is besides the casual games genre, most 2D game developers seem to be obsessed with insanely hard mode bullethell. So not being good at action games, the only 2D games I can finish are turn-based RPG and strategy games.

Also, because of abstraction like delta mentioned, 8/16 bit art feels more animated than fully-drawn 32-bit high-res sprites, which often feel very Flash-like in their movement (which I dislike).

As for 3D, I've learn to 'abstract' a bit so most except the absolute worst of 3D art rarely bother me. The problem, once again, is what the game developers do with it. It seems they went the opposite extreme of the 2D devs in that instead of providing insanely hard challenge, they instead make the game a hand-holding tutorial session for toddlers. It's like they thought, "Yay, we have 3D reusable art assets. Let's insert a non-interactive cutscene every 3 minutes, I bet the audience just will love that and admire the awesomeness of our attempt at rigging and lighting!" Maybe it's just my perception but it does seem as though 3D games nowadays are aimed at non-gamers who are transitioning from movies and 3D cartoons. It's good if they just want to provide interactive stories, but they rarely provide multiple plot branches as interactive stories should.

This all sucks for people like me who want to step back and absorb the atmosphere of the game, but at my own leisure. Not to just die because I haven't pressed a button in 5 seconds, nor to have some annoying tutorial-spouting sidekick constantly at my side.

[LVUER]

Well, if we talk about game in general, then 2D and 3D really have different purpose (and pro and con). 2D will create richer expression but 3D could create more dynamic scene.

[Maverynthia]

I think a 3D Visual Novel works, if the pieces all look like they go together.
The opening image looks too...western and the shaders don't look good at all.
(I am biased towards the Japanese style more, only because they make the pretty boys look pretty.)

One of the example was he cel shaded girl with the sign. She still looks 3D and 'bad'. The shadows are TOO PERFECT. I say if your going for 3D, make it look 3D or fudge the shadows to make it look like it was 2D.