Pre-rendered Hooptie Sprite

[Carlos Camacho]

Hello, for a long time I promised to help in some way with this project. And last night I spent some time doing so. First, to all the artists thathave worked on Hooptie thus far, good stuff.

Now, what I did was to start with the Hooptie character. Going the 3D route will allow for different views in cut screens, or other splash screens. It also allows for various types of animation. To see how the character was made. Download this file:

http://www.idevgames.com/HOOPTIEIMAGES.sit

You see him at different views and "naked" as well as textured. The texturing can still change.

Next, I have given you all the mesh. It was made in Strata 3D Pro. Please download the free version. If it doesn't support booleans, or if you prefer another 3d app, I included Amapi format (free app on our site), OBJ, DXF and 3DS. The mesh models are here:

http://www.idevgames.com/HooptieMesh.sit

Now, I can tweak things but I lack time to do the key frames which will be needed to render out his walking. Your projects's artists should be able to handle this though with ease. (The beauty of 3d)

After rendering your keyframes, you now have a very spiffy sprite. You will need to render all sprites with the same direction light, otherwise things will look "strange."

If you are all happy, then I will render out enemies, ice blocks, rocks, and other stuff. In the end, you will have a full set of sprites and tiles which will have some nice eye-candy.

Cheers

[Pazolli]

Thanks for your work Carlos, but I think I'd like to stick with Alan's graphics. Of course it's up to the membership of Inkubator, but making the group totally 3D would require a lot of work, plus I have an affinity for how Hooptie is at the moment.

Thanks though for your contribution,
Mark

[Chris Burkhardt]

Hi Carlos, sorry this thread got ignored... I was waiting until I got back my home computer to download the .sits. I looked at the models and they are nice... but, as far as pre-rendered graphics go, Alan is turning out some very nice looking sprites (and he has put far too much work into them to just overwrite them now).

I'm not sure what we could use the models for... the game is gaining a very consistant look with Alan's splash screens... possibly a real-time 3D Hooptie in the future?

[DaFalcon]

I completely understand the value to artists of 3D graphics, because it certainly is much easier to specify keyframes than to draw each fram by hand ... I've downloaded the files you've presented, but I've held back responding because I didn't feel that I should be the first to respond, since I'm basically the key graphics person right now, so I kind of like the current look and feel of the game :-) I actually did use 3D for the bonus jewels, and that allowed for more eye candy, like you said, but I think the graphics still fit in with the current look of the game... And I don't have a 3D program good enough to properly animate and render good 3D characters like your model of Hooptie, so I'd have to step down for the new look to work. So anyway, I think it should be a group decision, so I just didn't want to be the first to say anything.

[Carlos Camacho]

Ok, someone then download the two files and keep them for a raining day. Since they are on the old server, they'll be whacked once we move.

Cheers

[Chris Burkhardt]

I got 'em. They'll go on my blue zip disk with the rest of my collection of assets.