PureBasic Forums - English

anyone ever tried to program an 'animation' engine?

hmmm that's a bit hard to explain take a look at cartoon channel / nickelodeon / jetix

some cartoons are 'flat' characters, coloured fields if you wish, surrounded by thick and thin lines, in other words, there's no real 3d

how difficult would it be to create such a thing in purebasic? haven't got a clue where to start, but i think i'd stay away from the regular 3d engines or approaches, any suggestions?

Hi!
its probably not very easy

have a look at Moho: http://www.lostmarble.com/moho/index.shtml

That is probably what you want. However i can assure you programming something like that isnt easy!

That's good for dracflamloc.
That pics are similar to his avatar

mmm. thefool, no, that's not exactly what i mean, ever seen 'fairy odd parents' or 'my life as a teenage robot' or 'powerpuff girls' or a similar cartoon?

what such an engine would have to do is NOT create a 2d world but actually create a 3d world, where you can walk through, yet all objects are 'flat' no matter in what direction you look

mmm

that sounds a bit wrong, doesn't it?

ok, let's put this differently

imagine a large sheet of paper, with you (the observer) standing in the middle

all objects around you are 2d, with their normals pointing at you

when you move over the sheet, all objects keep their normals pointed towards you, however what is shown on the '2d billboard' is different, as the viewing angle on the represented object changed

reading back, i wonder if that makes any more sense

http://www.lostmarble.com/moho/gallery/index.shtml
@psycopanta: actually some nice stuff has been made using it

@blueznl: Oh. so a kind of "billboard engine"? i mean billboards sounds to be exactly what you talk about..

yes, a billboard engine, the trick is however to create proper images for those billboards!

k.. i misunderstood your first post heh

another way to look at it is take a few 3d objects (head, body, arms, legs, clothing) and drop them on a 2d object trying to obtain that cartoony look

From what you've described, the first thing that sprang to mind was Cel Shading, something along these lines?
Probably a somewhat refined technique in regards to the Nick toons, I always figured they were made in something vector based, such as Flash.

> what such an engine would have to do is NOT create a 2d world but
> actually create a 3d world, where you can walk through, yet all objects
> are 'flat' no matter in what direction you look

Do you mean like in Classic Doom how the dead aliens always face you,
even if you walk around them?

no, exactly the opossite! what you see of the dead (or alive ) aliens is the side you would expect to see, however they should look as if they are drawn in 2d

Sort of like "flattening" a 3D object before rendering (or perhaps drawing is a better word) it?

Somewhere I saw an app that rendered cartoony 3D objects. Or had a filter to do this. The result was a bit DC or Marvel comics-ish. If an object rotated, it rotated, but looked flat.

IIRC, it was a fairly hefty piece of work. It took any max, milkshape, etc object and "Cartooned" it.

If that is what you are after - and if I can ever remember where it was - I will post the link.




Now if you can give me a link to a good tatoo-ish 3D painter that is free and easy to use ....

Ogre engine has that built into it ....

Dunno how to turn it on in Purebasic ...

dare, yes, that's the idea, although it's not just flattening it, as in cellshading in for example xviii (hope i got that game name right) i want to go to the extreme edge (as seen on those cartoon channels)

num3: so i should turn some attention to ogre? hmmm... i guess i'd better wait for pb4 then... oh well, my wishlist is so large these days

i'll see if i can cook something up using regular code, not using a real 3d engine... it must be possible... think think...

I'm also thinking about something like that quite frequently
The best solution would be having a normal 3D engine and a shader that doesn't do light effects in ANY way. The colors should just be shown in THAT color, that is given by the texture - but no light/dark difference.

This would be the first step, but I think it's tricky to do outlines around the characters...