Category Archives: Research

Interesting things that may lead to other interesting things.

Merging 3D and 2D Animation: “Three-dimensional Proxies for Hand-Drawn Characters”

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I’m surprised I didn’t see this research before, but I’m glad I have now, and wanted to quickly tell you about it.

Hand-drawn (traditional) animation and 3D (computer) animation have been separate forms for a long time. The over-abundance of computer animation has caused some people to mutter, but computer animation is easier and more effective in many ways, so some animators have tried to merge the benefits of both mediums. Oscar-winning Disney short “Paperman” is one such example of how such a style might work (still not able to replace hand-drawn in my opinion, but it comes very close and captures the general heart and soul very well).

But on this webpage, you can find a research paper by Eakta Jain (and Yaser Sheikh, Moshe Mahler, Jessica Hodgins) at Carnegie Mellon titled “Three-dimensional Proxies for Hand-Drawn Characters,” just one of several efforts made by Jain to somehow use traditional animation with modern technology. The included video shows the potential of combining 3D computer models for physics (with environments and cloth effects) with hand-drawn characters. It looks great, and was partially funded by Autodesk (creators of 3D software “Maya”) and Disney Research. Love or hate Disney, their research division really does catch on to some fantastic work.

Of course, it appears additional technical input is required on the artist’s part to make the two artworks mesh together properly, and I assume this is all pre-rendered and may have little to do with the potential in games or real time tech demos, but it looks good nonetheless.

The website I’m talking about is here: http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/projects/threeDproxy/ . Give it a look, it might inspire you.

Traditional Animation in a 3D Game: How and Why

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As anyone who has read my posts so far would know, I am working on a hand-drawn 3D game, the first of its kind. You may be curious on how such a endevaor was started, so I give a post here to explain that. Otherwise, feel free to click here to check out that game project in greater detail.

I love animation. All types of it. It makes me wonder why we use live-action footage at all for filmmaking, as it feels cheap in comparison. Animation requires a true artist to create everything entirely from scratch (not that I’m trying to put down live-action directors, the two mediums just involve different artisitc qualities). Taking the time to make something come to life, frame by frame by frame… I can’t help but admire the hard work that goes into it.

I love games in a similar manner. Here, not only is something coming to life in front of you, but you as a player are in control of that life. It’s hugely rewarding. Being a fan of animation, I eventually noticed that hand-drawn, traditional animation wasn’t being used as much anymore in the mid 2000’s for film; instead we got several computer-animated films each year, most of which were either bad or very forgettable at the time. If for no other reason, the excess of computer animation made the medium as a whole not worth what it used to be.

And so, I wondered… was there a way to make games with traditional animation? Of course, 2D games do this already, and do it especially well now, but what about 3D games? Sure, 3D graphics and models have made their way in 2D games (usually to great effect), but why not the other way around? At the very least, why haven’t we come up with a way to make computer animation mimic traditional animation to acheive this effect?

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Sprite Lamp – Some Smart Guys From Australia

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I don’t normally talk about what other people are doing. This is a site dedicated to Dust Scratch Games after all, and I am a rather selfish fellow. But sometimes, something comes up that just knocks my socks off.

Here is a group of guys from rural Australia who are working on something called “Sprite Lamp“, a dynamic 2D-lighting mapping tool for game development. It doesn’t sound like much… why not just have a point light in your environment and move it to where you want light to be? Well, with 2D art and 2D planes, that light gets reflected the same for the entire sprite, and it appears this new tool offers a way to define the effect light has from certain positions on a sprite. The result is some incredibly detailed art, making 2D pixel art look new again.

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Foreshadowing…

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There haven’t been too many clues yet on what Dust Scratch Games actually does or what they’re working on… until now.

Check out our latest videos on YouTube: experimental footage of 2D characters in 3D space. It’s a hand-drawn 3D game. Cool, right? You gotta check out the videos to see what we’re talking about. These were done as part of a proposed research project in early 2013 (by the sole member of this site) using the Unity 3D game engine. The methods utilized here are similar to older fps (“first-person shooter”) games before 3D modeling was viable, but expanded for third-person gameplay and a freely-rotating camera, and with full HD visuals, of course. The result is completely different from any game that exists today, and is the closest we’ve come to having hand-drawn animation cut into the more popular game genres.

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