*agrees with Floria*

If they wanted to be lazy instead of hand drawing everything, couldn't they do the initial model in a 3D app and sorta copy/paste each angle (say every 3 degree so needing 120 per object) into a 2D still?

DiP, this technique is currently used in UO:2D, and has even been used in Ultima 8 Pagan. The UO characters have always been 3D - sorta. The same applies to the characters in Ultima 8. But there is a huge disadvantage

Let me elaborate a bit...

The characters were created and animated in a 3D program. I don't know what was used for UO but I know 3D Studio DOS was used for Pagan. Then all animations were rendered out to single images - like frames in a film (the 2D still you referred to).

There was a "running-north", "running-south", "running-west", "running-east" animation which consisted of a few single images. Then there were animations for walking, idling, jumping, parrying, attacking - for all 4 directions. In UO there is even more - in UO this exists for EVERY piece of clothing, armor, basically every item that can be worn.
You can view all this when you download InsideUO. It's an enormous amount of data that sits on your harddisk. Tons of single images that add up to animations.

This is true for the characters in UO. They have always been 3D in a way. Except they were pre-rendered at Origin's studios. In the 3D clients, the 3D data gets rendered locally by your own 3D card and there is no need for tons of pre-rendered stuff. Drawback is that you need a good video card because now your own PC has to do all the work.

Anything else in the 2D client - terrain, items (from furniture to house tiles), effects - has most likely been hand painted by an artist in Photoshop or some other 2D app.

P.S. Here is the site of Origin artist Denis Loubet, who created character art for U8. You can even download some of the 3D meshes: http://www.io.com/~dloubet/

Neat site

something you could do with a 3D client, which I think would be cool...



I did this real quick with 3D studio max. I grabbed the textures from the current client using InsideUO. It's just a quick hack, that's why the character is pretty much stationary. But I think it gets across what I would like to see in a proper 3D client.

Thanks for elaborating. That would be a nice addition if they added it.

I though I read somewhere that they were not adding the rotating camera views

yeah, but I think they should

I think it's definitely possible, but it will sure require some extra work. Maybe we can expect this in a future upgrade to UO:KR. That would be sweet.

ahhh, yeah I like the rotating camera view just wasn't getting too excited about it since they are not adding it on the release date

They should be up the top with the rest of the current games on the shelves and bring out something amazing... who knows they may supprise us?
I like your 3d animation

Wouldn't 2D players miss out, also if they add new content they will know they have more work

thought some people might like to see some of the original UO screen shots to get an idea of how it changed from the original alpha stage. Note the difference between the Alpha and Beta characters

Alpha test


Beta test


Release day

and the 2d graphics have not changed since

(images stolen ..... er ...... borrowed from UO Travelogues)

Thanks SOM, that was great!

they could at least add the cool ships again they had in alpha