Do you remember those old point and click adventures? “Seed” with the artwork from the same guy that created the aliens in the “alien” movies. “Flight of the Amazon Queen” & “Gabriel Knight: sins of the father” are also among my all time favourites.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about making some point’n’click adventures of my own that people can download and play and I want to use Blender & GIMP for all the graphics & animations involved.
We all know that Blender can render some truly amazing imagery but…can it be used to make the old classic style that games used to look like. Although many of these games did look quite pixelated, they still somehow looked good and one could always appreciate the attention to detail that was often put into them.
I’m still not entirely sure how these graphics were created in the first place. I don’t believe that all of them were completely hand drawn using a 2D program as many of the images are quite correct in terms of Perspective, reflection, lighting etc…
The best method I think for achieving this is to render a nice scene using Blender. It shouldn’t have to be photo-realistic. I would imagine that the light is more important in this case. Let me know what you think.
Then use GIMP to apply the necessary filters that will make a modern hi res 3D image look like the classic 256 colour Amiga style graphics. I know that this is easier said than done but I’m sure it’s possible. There are so many post-production FX that one can apply to an image these days.
The Challenge -
To make a CGI rendered image look like the image from a classic point’n’click adventure i.e “Gabriel Knight: Sins of the father”
That’s it.
I’ll be throwing in some of my own progress soon but please feel encouraged to submit your own ideas and work on this. I would be greatful for any participation
I don’t get it. Why make high class graphics and then try to make them look old. If you miss the old looking adventures, there are tons to download from abandonware sites… I think it would rather be cool to have them with realistic looks.
Blender and Gimp seem like especially poor choices of software to recreate what you’re looking for. Why not use the Macromedia suite or something of the like? I assume this is going to be an unpopular opinion on this webpage, but still, Blender is an excellent modling program, why make it do crappy animation?
Blade: I already have downloaded a lot of the old point’n’click adventures but as I stated in my first post, I would like to start making my own. The reason for this is because a lot of the old games people can’t play because incompatibilites with windows and modern DOS versions.
If you think it’s cool for an adventure game to look real then you’re missing the point. It would be pretty easy to run around with a camera taking photos to have in the game. A lot of effort went into these graphics and I think to understand graphics better, it’s nice to take some steps back and explore the history and develoment of graphics.
anogarlr: The reason I chose Blender & GIMP for this is because they are both free to download and use. It wouldn’t really be fair to give a challange that requires the Macromedia suite that as far as I know is a commercial product. have you lost your faith in Open-Source? Isn’t that why we’re all here? I turned away from commercial software a long time ago.
Why make mordern animation look crap? Well I prefer to use the term “classic”. So I guess we will all stop watching the simpsons because it doesn’t use the latest in CGI technology. Let’s ask Steven Spielberg to go back and make “Schindler’s List” in colour. Why are we still making films set in the past?
Don’t be so naive. New things aren’t always better, they’re just different from things that are old. This what you call “crappy” animation was a person’s hard work using limited tools and if you can’t appreciate that, how can you appreciate someone’s work with Blender today. Shall we all call Picasso’s paintings crap because they’re so old and outdated?
So I guess we will all stop watching the simpsons because it doesn’t use the latest in CGI technology.
Exactly, they’re not using top of the line technology. But you’re trying to use a powerfull 3d software to create a “classic” 2d look. It just doesn’t make sence. They’re not using the top technology beacuse they draw stuff by hand to get what they want. So to get a classic look you’ll have to use the technology that gives that look. I mean… you got a nice idea going… I just don’t think that too many people will be passionate about it. It would be nice to see what you can come up with though, so don’t give up.
To make a CGI rendered image look like the image from a classic point’n’click adventure i.e “Gabriel Knight: Sins of the father”
That was the challange. I know that this can be done using just a 2D progam but I want to know if it can be done using a CGI image to start off with. Thats the bulk of the challange, to make something CG look like it was hand drawn. I guess I should have explained the challange more clearly %|
Oh I see… well… good luck, heh I don’t see much challenge in that with the filters that programs like Photoshop offers. I am not sure what GIMP can do, so that might be a challenge.
Blender does 3D, blender does 2D. Gimp does 2D and some damn good PP.
Blender is actually an excellent choice for whatever kind of graphics your making if you know how to use it. Alltaken did some very nice 2D graphics a little while ago with blender.
I have personally done quite a few 2D peices with Blender. I use blender for almost all my graphics work because i know how to use it.
