Creating 2D graphics with a 3D tool? [closed]

Question

I'm planning to develop a RTS game with 2D graphics, since it will be a sprites-based game it will require multiple views of every actor (or at least for most of them)

for instance

Now the problem is I kinda sucks as designer, can work a bit with Photoshop but being a 2D software would be really hard to create different views of a single character and make it to look the same.

That's why I was thinking to create models with a 3D tool, then i could get all the renders just rotating them...does this make sense for you guys?

If so, that drives me to a second question: What software could I use?

Again, I'm programmer not designer so I will need to learn from scratch, and 3D studio and Blender look really complex, Google Sketchup seems to be easier but not sure if worth it.

Well that's it, thanks in advance for any feedback.

Answer 1

Creating your actors with a 3D modelling tool and then creating sprites by rendering multiple viewpoints of them is a sound approach. The main thing is to make sure you have a way of scripting the sprite production so that you don't have to tediously generate 100s of sprite images manually!

These days though, I'd have to query why, if you have actors as 3D models, you wouldn't just render them directly in 3D on whatever platform the game is running on. Even the most humble mobile platform has enough graphics power to 3D render any model you're likely to cook up for sprite-sized objects, and a fully 3D approach gives much more flexibility.

Hybrid approaches are also possible; I seem to remember the Total Annihilation RTS games stored 3D models of the game objects, but created and cached 2D spites of them on demand (within the otherwise 2D game engine) rather than relying on the flaky 3D HW of the day or on pregeneration of sprite images for loading. It was a good solution for it's time but I'd be surprised if the approach was still needed today.