3D animation of a character - RTS

[berianu]

Hello guys, I'm new here, nice to meet you all!

A short time ago I started to build a browser-based RTS game. Things are going well, thanks to your tutorials, but I'm struggling with the graphics, more specific with the character. I am looking to design a character similar to those in Age Of Empires 2, which can move along the map without looking like a 2d figure.

I have done some research and I found this: http://code.google.com/p/cal3djs/ , but there are not enough resources on the web like tutorials etc. Also I am afraid that this is too complicated for my actual skills.

What would you rcommend?

Thank you in advance,
Vlad

[Jackolantern]

The issue for now, and for the immediate future with using true 3D models in the browser using WebGL is performance. RTS are known for needing many units on the screen at once, and once you add in targets, backgrounds, effects and other needed things, I just don't think WebGL could handle it in most browsers.

If you are referring to creating pre-rendered images of 3D models moving, that could work and would be more inline with what is natively possible in the browser. However, if that is the case, I would just find some existing models online (that come with common animations) and simply create spritesheets from them. That will also boost the model quality as far as you want it to go, since pre-rendered images make no difference to performance whether the model has 400 tris or 40,000.

[berianu]

Can you give me a suggestion regarding a place on the web where can I find pre-rendered images of 3D models (with some basic animation)?
That would be a huge burst for my project

Ty for the quick feedback!

[Jackolantern]

You would actually need to find the 3D models themselves on one of the many free 3D game content websites (and other non-game focused 3D content sites, like TurboSquid) and then use a tool to turn them into spritesheets. You would need to tailor them to your game, since the perspectives and sizes all have to be right. The tool can either be 3rd party, or it could even be built-into the modeling program, such as this short tutorial for Blender.

[berianu]

Thank you, sir!

[hallsofvallhalla]

It is coding vs performance. I think much of today's webGL is rushed to keep up or beat someone else out of the gate.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/dem ... ead/launch

[Jackolantern]

RTS games are notoriously needy when it comes to 3D graphical processing since an RTS is considered boring if you only have 2 or 3 things going on at once. Most of today's RTS players want at least 15+ things to be happening at once and want sometimes hundreds of units and targets on-screen at once. WebGL just isn't up to the task at the moment, and it won't be until we get hardware-acceleration across the board in all major browsers, and that is a few years away still