Alright so as I'm following these steps my 'shadow catcher' 6:50 - 7:00 doesn't go transparent like yours when viewing the " Layout " tab or rendering it in any way. Watching several parts of this video going back and forth to my project I keep feeling like I'm missing something.. - Using latest blender on steam : 2.92.0 [ EDIT ] 4:25 - 4:35 was the answer.. Clicking on Film -> Transparency fixed my problem. !_! Simple things are overlooked too much.
Fantastic tutorial. I think this is what I need. I just want top down view though, so I guess I have to adjust the camera. How to get the right size? I need a scale of 8pixel per meter in game.
1. Take an orthographic camera 2. Make it look from top down 3. The Orthographic Scale of the camera is the amount of meters you want to see (If you use meters as scene unit) 4. Set the X and Y resolution of the render to 8 (px) * orthigraphic scale = 8 px per scene meter
@@theonlykingjo Thanks man, I was following the tutorial last night with a Tiger tank model, I'm at the point of starting the actual animation to rotate it but I didn't understand the part when you say 'key frame' at 5:24 what is it that your doing there? And step 4 you posted above, I didn't get where to set those parameters you mention. Also, do you have a forum or discord or whatever where I can contact you if I get stuck? Or just to show you progress. Thanks!
You have to set keyframes for the animation. Press I to open up the keyframe menu. And also press the little record button on the bottom to record any new modifications in rotation. Step 4 is set up in the Output Properties > Format
@@theonlykingjo I finished it yesterday finally but the results where not optimal: The doubts: 1.- I rendered in double the needed scale, (actual image size from Blender resulted 220x220px included the transparency) to see more detail I thought and then reduce to desire scale using an image manipulator program. Actual image used in game is just 30x60 by trimming away most of the transparency and adjusting layer to fit image. Will try to render in actual needed scale today and see the results. My mistake. 2.- I found quite a bit of blur in the perimeter, weak pixels almost transparent. Ideally I would want to have the image and it's details to remain as hard as they can, almost as pixel art but not quite. I Had to manually erase them because the game in question takes white as transparent but any pixel approaching white is shown in game resulting in a model with white artifacts surrounding it. Manually editing 17 images per model I recon can be quite time consuming! 3.- The final 2D model used in game turned out to be way too bright or light colored. Any way to adjust this inside Blender? or does it have to be adjusted in photoshop/GIMP? 4.- The model itself looked OK. not as good as I had hoped :( probably need to adjust more things. Nevertheless it was much better than my first try which consisted of edited screenshots of the Tiger model as shown in an online 3D viewer lol. 5.-When trying to save as TGA (the format used by the game I try to mod) the transparency saved as black background! I had to save as PNG the render from Blender and then convert to TGA in photoshop. I don't know if this caused more detail loss. The amazing: 6.- The shadow tip was awesome! the alternative before this was to get an existing shadow and editing manually 64 of them! or create 64 from scratch! total madness. This cuts the work by a lot! 7.- I just need 17 images from the model tilted in various angles, not a whole sprite sheet. The way you can rotate the model by angle on each axis is amazing. I could figure out each angle by looking at an existing model used in game and some trial and error with the model in blender. I just need the models to be a bit crispier at such a small scale and then I could go wild importing high definition models into the game. Thanks again man! you have thought me a lot with this tutorial.
You forgot to connect denoising normal to the node which would decrease the denoising quality Also there is a setting that can enable minus frames, so the first frame can be 0 instead of 1 Select all the objects and press alt while toggling an option would toggle it for all the objects, could save a bit of time when changing the visibility
Dunno which node you mean. I'm not using the node denoiser anymore anyway. I'm using the OptiX denoiser in the render properties. Uhhh idc bout minus frames? ^^ I know the function with alt since quite some time already now, but just didn't then. Also I thought I tried that specific example once and it didn't work, but did it just now and you're right. Thanks!
@@theonlykingjo It's been 5 months since I've commented on this video, I don't have youtube notifications on so didn't know you replied. Genuinely don't know about they added AI denoisers into the properties section, thought it was still only the non-AI based denoiser. The correct way to use the denoising node is go to the view layer properties -> passes and tick the "denoising data", then in the compositor you can connect "denoising normal" to "normal", "denoising albedo" to "albedo". Kinda tricky. The negative frame thing is at Preferences -> Animation -> allow negative frames, by enabling this you can have the scene time go from 0 to 127 as opposed to 1 to 128, so you don't need to rename the last image from 0128.png to 0000.png manually. The alt thing seems to only work with ticks and values, anything else like adding a modifier doesn't work
@@youtubehandlesux Yeah true And frames true too ^^ I've come yet another long way from 5 months ago in Blender so I do know most stuff better than i did when i made that tutorial XD
@@theonlykingjo That's very cool. I've gone a long way too and this video helped. In fact I'm revisiting this video today because I'm rendering some assets for my own very first game, thanks for the tutorial!
![How To Create PERFECT Depth Maps In Blender [COMPLETE TUTORIAL]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/7_9uS2ixBCs/mqdefault.jpg)
This is great, thank you. I went from "never used blender" to having nice sprites for my mods in a couple of hours.
Good stuff, I followed the steps and now i have a few lovely spritesheets, can't wait for part 2!
Thank you! I was especially curious about making a shadow-only render. Brilliant guide!
Why here only 100 views? It's the most useful video I've seen about creating sprites with a blender, thank you very much, and hello from Russia!
Amazing content and video mate,keep it up,subbed !
Now i know how factorio was made
Alright so as I'm following these steps my 'shadow catcher' 6:50 - 7:00 doesn't go transparent like yours when viewing the " Layout " tab or rendering it in any way.
Watching several parts of this video going back and forth to my project I keep feeling like I'm missing something..
- Using latest blender on steam : 2.92.0
[ EDIT ]
4:25 - 4:35 was the answer.. Clicking on Film -> Transparency fixed my problem. !_! Simple things are overlooked too much.
If you did all the steps and also additionally only enabled that one visibility option on the plane, i have no idea what's wrong sry ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@theonlykingjo all good, i found the buttons i was looking for :)
I just have to do this for all of the sprites i make now ha ha ..
Fantastic tutorial. I think this is what I need. I just want top down view though, so I guess I have to adjust the camera.
How to get the right size? I need a scale of 8pixel per meter in game.
1. Take an orthographic camera
2. Make it look from top down
3. The Orthographic Scale of the camera is the amount of meters you want to see (If you use meters as scene unit)
4. Set the X and Y resolution of the render to 8 (px) * orthigraphic scale = 8 px per scene meter
@@theonlykingjo Thanks man, I was following the tutorial last night with a Tiger tank model, I'm at the point of starting the actual animation to rotate it but I didn't understand the part when you say 'key frame' at 5:24 what is it that your doing there? And step 4 you posted above, I didn't get where to set those parameters you mention.
Also, do you have a forum or discord or whatever where I can contact you if I get stuck? Or just to show you progress.
Thanks!
Ima answer you tomorrow
Here’s my Discord invite:
discord.com/invite/a9uAQHGxwX
You have to set keyframes for the animation. Press I to open up the keyframe menu. And also press the little record button on the bottom to record any new modifications in rotation.
Step 4 is set up in the Output Properties > Format
@@theonlykingjo I finished it yesterday finally but the results where not optimal:
The doubts:
1.- I rendered in double the needed scale, (actual image size from Blender resulted 220x220px included the transparency) to see more detail I thought and then reduce to desire scale using an image manipulator program. Actual image used in game is just 30x60 by trimming away most of the transparency and adjusting layer to fit image. Will try to render in actual needed scale today and see the results. My mistake.
2.- I found quite a bit of blur in the perimeter, weak pixels almost transparent. Ideally I would want to have the image and it's details to remain as hard as they can, almost as pixel art but not quite. I Had to manually erase them because the game in question takes white as transparent but any pixel approaching white is shown in game resulting in a model with white artifacts surrounding it. Manually editing 17 images per model I recon can be quite time consuming!
3.- The final 2D model used in game turned out to be way too bright or light colored. Any way to adjust this inside Blender? or does it have to be adjusted in photoshop/GIMP?
4.- The model itself looked OK. not as good as I had hoped :( probably need to adjust more things. Nevertheless it was much better than my first try which consisted of edited screenshots of the Tiger model as shown in an online 3D viewer lol.
5.-When trying to save as TGA (the format used by the game I try to mod) the transparency saved as black background! I had to save as PNG the render from Blender and then convert to TGA in photoshop. I don't know if this caused more detail loss.
The amazing:
6.- The shadow tip was awesome! the alternative before this was to get an existing shadow and editing manually 64 of them! or create 64 from scratch! total madness. This cuts the work by a lot!
7.- I just need 17 images from the model tilted in various angles, not a whole sprite sheet. The way you can rotate the model by angle on each axis is amazing. I could figure out each angle by looking at an existing model used in game and some trial and error with the model in blender. I just need the models to be a bit crispier at such a small scale and then I could go wild importing high definition models into the game.
Thanks again man! you have thought me a lot with this tutorial.
You forgot to connect denoising normal to the node which would decrease the denoising quality
Also there is a setting that can enable minus frames, so the first frame can be 0 instead of 1
Select all the objects and press alt while toggling an option would toggle it for all the objects, could save a bit of time when changing the visibility
Dunno which node you mean. I'm not using the node denoiser anymore anyway. I'm using the OptiX denoiser in the render properties.
Uhhh idc bout minus frames? ^^
I know the function with alt since quite some time already now, but just didn't then. Also I thought I tried that specific example once and it didn't work, but did it just now and you're right. Thanks!
@@theonlykingjo It's been 5 months since I've commented on this video, I don't have youtube notifications on so didn't know you replied. Genuinely don't know about they added AI denoisers into the properties section, thought it was still only the non-AI based denoiser. The correct way to use the denoising node is go to the view layer properties -> passes and tick the "denoising data", then in the compositor you can connect "denoising normal" to "normal", "denoising albedo" to "albedo". Kinda tricky.
The negative frame thing is at Preferences -> Animation -> allow negative frames, by enabling this you can have the scene time go from 0 to 127 as opposed to 1 to 128, so you don't need to rename the last image from 0128.png to 0000.png manually.
The alt thing seems to only work with ticks and values, anything else like adding a modifier doesn't work
@@youtubehandlesux Yeah true
And frames true too ^^
I've come yet another long way from 5 months ago in Blender so I do know most stuff better than i did when i made that tutorial XD
@@theonlykingjo That's very cool. I've gone a long way too and this video helped. In fact I'm revisiting this video today because I'm rendering some assets for my own very first game, thanks for the tutorial!
@@youtubehandlesux You're welcome 😉