[duke3d.exe]

I know that unlike Doom where they used real figures, in Duke 3d they used a 3d program, so they did the high res 3d models and then took screenshots basically, and made it pixelized.

My question is, how should one take the screenshots of your model to make it look like it belongs in Duke 3d and not out of place? How to maintain the right size so it has the right amount of pixels, and how to treat colors/palette?

This would be for a game that isn't on the Build engine, but I want to have more or less the same resolution they used for Duke 3d because I think it has the best looking retro 3d sprites. They aged much better than Doom where it's too low res, and definitely better than the rest of all the other "2.5d era" games where they looked straight weird. Must be because Duke 3d models also had an original charm to it, because Doom ones also aged better than Witchhaven, Tekwar, and even Doom 64. But nonetheless, assuming your original model is a good design, from a technical point of view, what is the best way to treat this material and make it look good when converting to sprites?

I would have the same questions for the textures btw. Same principle applies: having an higher res design and then making it pixelized but still make it look good.

[Jimmy]

Just study the original sprites. Not being a smartass here, the answers are right there.

[Ninety-Six]

Jimmy, on 10 June 2021 - 09:39 PM, said:

Just study the original sprites. Not being a smartass here, the answers are right there.

I'll confess to something. I've been looking at these sprites for 20 years, and if I didn't already know this game better than houses I've lived in, I wouldn't be able to tell them apart from other sprite-based FPS games of the time if you lined one up next to another (say, the Cycloid Emperor and the Cyberdemon).

I'm rather interested in this topic as well, since I struggle to tell pixel art styles apart unless one is much more heavily stylized than the other (despite my love for sprites and even having dabbled in sprite editing myself). So I suppose what I'm asking is, what exactly do we look for? Where do we find differences in art style when we are looking at completely different monster designs? What are the aspects that make sprites from one game unique to itself?


I'm likewise not trying to be an asshole. Everything I asked comes from a genuine place. Exe would benefit from this, too.

[MC84]

This article from the Ion Fury dev blog partly answers your question.

https://3drealms.com...art-ion-maiden/

Regarding the duke style, well part of it is the proportions of the 3d models (kind of squat and chunky). I'd say that it would be wise to use colours from the duke3d palette on your model's materials so that there's less colour mismatches when eventually converting the frames to indexed.

To be honest the best person to answer your question would be Sebabdukeboss20, who does all the sprites for Alien Armageddon and manages to render them out in a style very consistent with duke3d. However if you're using a different setup to him (3D software/2d photo editor) then you'll likely have to figure out a workflow that works for you.

[Jimmy]

Sebab does good work but I don't think it compares to the original art for the most part. Also in his defense, not all of the original art even fits together completely.

[Mark]

If you are familiar with making 3d models the process should be pretty obvious. If you are not familiar, the process might be too technical for a short instructional post here.

[duke3d.exe]

Mark, on 11 June 2021 - 12:01 PM, said:

If you are familiar with making 3d models the process should be pretty obvious. If you are not familiar, the process might be too technical for a short instructional post here.

Im familiar with the basic idea of making a 3d model and then taking screenshots front, back, sides, and 45 degree to make the sprites. What im asking is, what should the resolution of the source material be and what technique to resize the textures to make them pixelated and look good, because there are different algorithms depending on the software you use. For instance paint.net can have smooth enabled/disabled.

[Mark]

You have to remember that lighting the model from the proper angle and keeping it consistant is important when taking the snapshots.

How much you pixelate depends on how high res your model is starting with and how important is it to retain details, highlights and shadows. Do you want just solid color eyes or do you want to see pupils? There are so many ranges of pixelation for what people consider old school graphics that its hard to give actual numbers or resolutions to shoot for.

And a potentially annoying problem is if you will be using a limiting 8 bit palette. Converting to 8 bit can be frustrating and involve a lot of trial and error and usually a fair amount of manual touchup afterwards.

I guess what I'm saying is you just have to jump in and start experimenting yourself to find out what it takes to get the results you want.

[Jimmy]

duke3d.exe, on 11 June 2021 - 02:20 PM, said:

Im familiar with the basic idea of making a 3d model and then taking screenshots front, back, sides, and 45 degree to make the sprites. What im asking is, what should the resolution of the source material be and what technique to resize the textures to make them pixelated and look good, because there are different algorithms depending on the software you use. For instance paint.net can have smooth enabled/disabled.

The answer is whatever works for you.

[MrFlibble]

duke3d.exe, on 11 June 2021 - 02:20 PM, said:

What im asking is, what should the resolution of the source material be and what technique to resize the textures to make them pixelated and look good, because there are different algorithms depending on the software you use. For instance paint.net can have smooth enabled/disabled.

I agree that this is not a trivial question, how to make the end result look good after downscaling. Since I did some experiments with neural upscales, I can tell you that simply palettising a downscaled image will not remove the sampling artifacts. My guess is that a lot of this gets cleaned up manually when a sprite is touched up after scaling down to the desired resolution, as shown in the Ion Fury article that was linked to above.

It also seems reasonable to try out the different options available to see which downsampling results look better.

You can get the idea of the original model resolution and detail by looking at the released renders of Chuck Jones' models.

[Fox]

It seems most of the sprites have zero touch ups. Chuck Jones just created a set up that could render the models with the look he wanted.

[MC84]

Fox, on 12 June 2021 - 08:22 PM, said:

It seems most of the sprites have zero touch ups. Chuck Jones just created a set up that could render the models with the look he wanted.

well that's impressive - I had always assumed that they had to do a fair bit of manual touch ups.

[duke3d.exe]

Fox, on 12 June 2021 - 08:22 PM, said:

It seems most of the sprites have zero touch ups. Chuck Jones just created a set up that could render the models with the look he wanted.

How did he achieve such setup? it would be a time saver if one would just need to focus on creating the 3d model and taking screenshots. Manually going pixel by pixel is insane.

[Jimmy]

You can see Jones refining this process throughout Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior's development.

[duke3d.exe]

Anyone knows how Wolfenstein 3d was made? I've never seen clay figures for the soldiers etc. They used 3d software back then or it was 100% hand drawn?

[MrFlibble]

Fox, on 12 June 2021 - 08:22 PM, said:

It seems most of the sprites have zero touch ups. Chuck Jones just created a set up that could render the models with the look he wanted.

Certainly there was at least some editing to get the transparent parts / sprite outlines right? Also do you think converting the images into the Duke palette always worked as intended?

duke3d.exe, on 16 June 2021 - 05:33 AM, said:

Anyone knows how Wolfenstein 3d was made? I've never seen clay figures for the soldiers etc. They used 3d software back then or it was 100% hand drawn?

They look pretty much hand drawn, but perhaps a model was used for reference to get proper posturing, like with the Pinky in Doom? I don't believe there were any WIP materials released concerning how Wolf3D or Blake Stone character sprites were made.

[Fox]

duke3d.exe, on 16 June 2021 - 05:33 AM, said:

Anyone knows how Wolfenstein 3d was made? I've never seen clay figures for the soldiers etc. They used 3d software back then or it was 100% hand drawn?

They were hand drawn

MrFlibble, on 16 June 2021 - 11:48 AM, said:

Certainly there was at least some editing to get the transparent parts / sprite outlines right? Also do you think converting the images into the Duke palette always worked as intended?

TX released this image in the past



Since the image is 320x200 and still has anti-aliasing with the background, I suppose it's what you get from the 3D rendering

There are some changes in the face, but it's hard to tell what is a touch-up and what was changed in the model itself. I suppose there were some touch-ups nonetheless...

I find it hard to believe the background would be cut manually, Chuck Jones must have used some short-cuts. It makes sense to export with magenta to import it on Editart for a quick preview. But this is just an assumption.

[TheMuseumCurator]

I love those early EGA "surrender" sprites from the basic guards & SS soldiers! It's pretty clear at which point the game stopped being a "3D" remake of the Apple II game in the way that Catacombs 3D was a first person take on the Gauntlet formula & Wolf3D started becoming it's own thing. The First Person Shooter thing. Kinda like when it stopped being "LameDuke" Nukem II turned 3D & started going in a different style where you didn't fight robots for points & prizes / drink Coca-Cola all day long.

[MrFlibble]

Fox, on 16 June 2021 - 04:26 PM, said:

I find it hard to believe the background would be cut manually, Chuck Jones must have used some short-cuts. It makes sense to export with magenta to import it on Editart for a quick preview. But this is just an assumption.

The background transparency was almost certainly not achieved by 100pc manual cleanup, but scaling down sprites to the required size would leave artifacts on the edges, and some effort had to be spent on removing them. We know this because sometimes those stray pixels remain and can be seen on certain sprites. I'm not talking about Duke specifically here, but some games from the era have this more prominently than others. Daggerfall is a good example because it has both entirely hand-drawn sprites and pre-rendered sprites. The latter have remnants of a black or dark outline around the sprites' shape -- almost not noticeable in-game where sprites appear against a background but quite visible otherwise. Hand-drawn sprites have no such artifacts.