Turn 3D models into pixel art

[O Ilusionista]

Holy mother of God...

Japanese artist Toshihiro Kushizaki has released the Pixel Art Shader: a free Blender shader that should convert any 3D model into old-school pixel art.

To render out a pixel art image, you just need a 3D model in .x format and a palette texture, which defines the set of colours to be used; but you can augment the result with standard texture maps, even including AO.

The image is generated in BMP format, and the results look pretty good, at least in the demo scene.

Other example


There's a detailed online manual, but like the rest of Kushizaki's site, it's in Japanese, so if you're a non-Japanese-speaker, you'll need to navigate Google Translate.

Download the Pixel Art Shader on Toshihiro Kushizaki's website (Automatic English translation)

Read an English-language user-contributed tutorial on using the shader

Source: http://www.cgchannel.com/2015/02/this-free-blender-shader-turns-3d-models-into-pixel-art/


Other examples:


Source: http://lesterbanks.com/2015/02/pixel-art-shader-blender/


Video: http://a.pomf.se/cwpzsw.webm
Source:

Spoiler: NSFW (click to show)

http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=10835134

Tutorial: http://imgur.com/a/qSk5p

Spoiler: images (click to show)

[img resized=1 width=681 height=800]https://i.imgur.com/wwnFYxo.png[/img]
[img resized=1 width=800 height=629]https://i.imgur.com/iDIk2Kv.png[/img]
[img resized=1 width=610 height=800]https://i.imgur.com/r2FL0r6.png[/img]
[img resized=1 width=800 height=592]https://i.imgur.com/ZK9Yn3I.png[/img]
[img resized=1 width=800 height=758]https://i.imgur.com/NqAjSEp.png[/img]
[img resized=1 width=683 height=800]https://i.imgur.com/HEiF22u.png[/img]

I haven't tested it yet, but it seems awesome!

[lui]

holy crap. Batman sprites anyone.

[-Whiplash-]

Well, time to get to converting the characters from Smash and UMVC3....

[Titiln]

wouldn't you have to make a different model for each "sprite" for this to work for mugen

[O Ilusionista]

wouldn't you have to make a different model for each "sprite" for this to work for mugen

Not a different model per se, but to save a different pose for each sprite.

[Iced]

wouldn't you have to make a different model for each "sprite" for this to work for mugen

you would have to make keyposes. Its not dissimilar how they did banjo kazooie animation, except that it completely reshades it to something more
like pixel art.

edit: not banjo, donkey kong, i had a brain fart.

[Gennos]

Well, time to get to converting the characters from Smash and UMVC3....

easier said than done, you have to export both the models and the animation skeletons out from the games.

[-Whiplash-]

Well, time to get to converting the characters from Smash and UMVC3....

easier said than done, you have to export both the models and the animation skeletons out from the games.

I'm almost 100% certain at least smash bros has already had the models and skeletons exported into a working blender file type.

[lui]

well this should make spriting 3d characters much easier than from scratch atleast. you can just re-touch the sprites afterwards then BOOM.

[Berry]

wouldn't you have to make a different model for each "sprite" for this to work for mugen

different pose, seems usable though since we have had some characters made out of model poses, Maverik's characters are like that.

[Titiln]

i meant you'd need to feed the program a different model file each time. obviously each file would be based on the same model just posed differently

[The 100 Mega Shock!]

That is indeed an unfiltered 3D render

[hatter]

So copping this. I can see this being used for a King of Fighters XIII stage art approach, so I'ma be all over this.

[MotorRoach]

And speaking of KOF XIII, I'm here wondering if that would look good for making KOF XIII styled characters. I'm all for that.

[lui]

ill give it a test go once i get my new lappy in two weeks.

[Алексей]

Disclaimer: I know nothing about Blender.

If this is a shader, then couldn't the post-rendered result be an uncompressed video from which you could take the frames and process in your favorite photo-editing program? That's how I'd expect it to work anyways. It also says that the application does a batch conversion, generating multiple images. That gives me hope that this thing can process your animations. The successful animation was in the camera_root node apparently. It's possible that only means that the camera can be animated and exported. I don't see why it wouldn't be able to handle timeline animation instead. But yeah... the disclaimer, lol.

[vgma2]

This looks fricken' amazing!
Definitely gotta check this out after school.

[altoiddealer]

I render my sprites from 3D.

In my software, and like many advanced photo/video editors (even Photoshop), there is a "Timeline."  The timeline has an infinite number of ticks - you adjust this according to your needs.

In my case, I only use a few ticks on the timeline, and treat each one as 1 frame of animation.  So if I want my character to turn in 4 frames, I start on the first frame and set a keyframe.  I then skip to the 4th frame, rotate the model, and create another keyframe.  The result is that the programs "tweens" the animation between those other 2 ticks on the timeline.  Using the same method across 8 ticks on the timeline you would have 8 frames, and an overall smoother animation (obviously).  For my avatar, I set a keyframe, jumped to maybe the 16th tick, rotated the model 360 degrees and set another keyframe. Voila.

There are a crapload of components that can be individually keyframed, meaning that everything does not need to happen simultaneously.  With my character, for instance, I often use separate keyframes for the "flaps" on the left/right side.  In this fashion I can have them begin to open while he is turning... so his entire body has keyframes, and one or both flaps have their own keyframes and actions.  The possibilities are limitless.


If you have a skeleton set up you can create whatever animation you want, as fluid as you want, depending on the number of frames you want to use.

In render settings you render one frame at a time, by default.  However you can change it to spit out all the differerent frames as individual files instead.

Spoiler (click to show)

Frames rendered from 3D, then tweaked a bit in Photoshop (refining colors, cleaning a few stray pixels, etc)
I drew the arm and gun in afterwards, but I could have done those in 3D as well.

[The 100 Mega Shock!]

also my avatar is a few 3D renders layered over each other with some small post-processing.

I'm most concerened about small details with xxxtreme pixel art renders, already you can see on the front of that guy's jacket and the seams on his pant legs are popping in and out of existence in each frame. Not to mention game models would need a lot of modification to take details that are baked into the texture map and make them show up on the geometery.

Guilty Gear sized sprites may work a lot better tho.

[AlexSin]

Wow!