helpful tool for sprite creation

[moriarty]

I found this while pondering an easier way to create a sprite for an interceptor for the battlescape (see https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,929.msg9043.html#msg9043 )

you need blender https://www.blender.org/
and I would suggest using irfanview https://www.irfanview.de/

both are also available as portable apps https://portableapps.com/

here in the independent gaming forum, user "Rock D" posted something very helpful: a blender file that allows you to create isometric views for a given 3d model. what it does is it rotates a camera around the object in the correct angle and distance and stuff, and takes snapshots. for our purposes, the snapshots are too large and too many, but you can easily choose the right ones out of there and batch-convert them using irfanview.

so once you have a 3d model, you can turn it into sprites easily. and if we ever go high-res, the 3d models can be used again to create high-res sprites

[kkmic]

Hi-res sprites? I would like to see that in OXC once 1.0 is done deal.

[luke83]

Hey Moriarty , Can you write a "How TO" for this and post it up , i would love to have a go at this ( especially since i have been playing in blender for 2 months) but since i now study 3 nights a week ( Drafting  curse) after work i dont have a lot of time for Trial and error

[moriarty]

I'll see what I can do

actually, if I find the time, I will try to modify the file so that it immediately outputs xcom-usable files without the need for re-sizing. unfortunately, my free time is just as limited at the moment.

[moriarty]

so, I at least found the time to actually read through all of the original tutorial in the forum I linked to, and I think I don't actually need to modify anything, because everything we need can already be configured right in the file itself, and the tutorial is actually rather good

so in case you missed the link in my first post:

https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=4307.0