Suggest software for backgrounds and character creation-animation

Hello to all.
I'm a totally new member and user of Visionaire studio and i must say i'm very happy i joined this community. For years now i'm thinking of creating a point & click adventure game but only recently i've decided to step into this world. I found Visionaire very attractive so.... i'm begining with this software. While learning the studio i'm also researching the web for the appropriate tools to create 2d backgrounds, characters and character animation. I'm focusing on freeware software for now but i will attempt to buy better software when i gain more experience.

So i would like to ask what kind of software do you use/suggest to create 2d background art like Monkey island or Broken sword style? Also what methodology do you follow to create these backgrounds? Sketch then scan then paint inside the software? Or directly draw inside the tool? Do you use a Wacom tablet for this issue?

What about character creation and animation software? Is Synfig a good start for a newbie like me? What kind of software was used for Visionaire commercial games Deponia, Kaptain Brawe, Whispered World, Jason the Greek, Stasis etc...? Are there any compatibility issues (meaning the exported animation files) between Visionaire and commonly used animation software?

Sorry if any of the above questions sound dumb. Just trying to get information from experienced Visionaire users/designers.

All the best and thanks.

vkouroub

I use 3DSMax for STASIS, but apart from that most everything else is relatively cheap from a software point of view.
Paintshop Pro (which I think is actually abandon ware now?) for my 2D work.
After Effects for colour grading and effects.
Sony Vegas for sound design and editing.
FL Studio for sound design.
DAZ 3D for rapid character creation (things like dead bodies, skeletons...the nice gooey horror stuff!)

I would highly recomend DAZ Studio for beginners who just want to jump into doing their own graphics without spending years learning the tools. It can get a little pricey with the props and stuff that you buy, but its remarkably fun. Sometimes I just fire it up to play around.

DAZ, combined with a 2D photo editor can be EXTREMELY powerful, and you can get some fantastic results.

Alternatively, you can also use Sketchup and take props from the Sketchup Warehouse. Sketchup even has a few different rendering modes.

I think that the Daedelic games are all 2D hand drawn, and then coloured in Photoshop (or an equivalent program).

You can also look at Flash for animation. While I've never used it, I've seen some amazing stuff done with it.

As for compatibility issues, Visioniare reads PNG's, so as long as you can export to PNG you'll be fine.

I use Sketchup, there's what they call "Styles" which will give you line outlines and various colour options, I know a few people you use Sketchup for the base drawing and you can't tell its originally 3D
Also there is ALOT of free plugins that work with the free Sketchup for animation, buildings, pipework, room mouldings, windows, doors, etc

Yes Daz is great, apart from it can get additive! Its quite easy to start spending money for outfits, hair etc, I bought an old age set and only used it once lol


I loved Paintshop pro but I lost my copy after a hard drive crash I usually use Gimp or Flash now

Hi Pyke & Nigec. Many thanks for your replies. Very interesting the DAZ studio software. I'll definetly give it a try. Also Sketchup looks fantastic and is somewhat familiar to me due to my experience with CAD software. So you can use sketchup to design 3d backgrounds and then export PNG's of 2d perspectives of that 3d background and use them in visionaire? Am i correct?

the backgrounds can be in png or jpeg... png is required for your characters & scene/object animations as they support transparent backgrounds.

sketchup models/scenes can be exported as .png, besides various other 2d/3d formats. the upcoming 2.5d support for vs will allow you to import collada (dae) format files (characters & objects)

http://help.sketchup.com/en/article/36203

There's some nice free renderers as well for Sketchup, like Kerkythea, and Povray, Kerythea does have shaders for 2D type renders, I'm not sure about Povray its a bit to OTT for my liking lol, then there's loads of commercial options, I use Thea but its more a photo real renderer and hard work to make it do anything else

If you try out DAZ Studio maybe it is of interest for you, to combine it with Blender. A guy named Casual Jacques wrote a bridge between DAZ Studio and blender so you can render DAZ Studio Scenes directly with the blender cycles engine. This bridge is called Teleblender.

With this bridge it is possible to setup a scene in DAZ Studio an then import it into Blender. Works really good, as
you can setup figure-animation in DAZ Studio an then doing lighting and effects in Blender..

This combination maybe an alternative if you can't afford 3DSMAX.

(I'm no expert in these things, I found Blender always a very complicated program).

Hello everybody and thanks for the help. I'm just about to finish the viz tutorial and everything seems very fine. In parallel i'm still searching and experimating all the suggested software and even more.

I really like Sketchup and the styles option but i'm not sure how easy would it be to model the game rooms/scenes/world in 3d and then take 2d png's from that world to build the backgrounds of a 2d adventure game.
Maybe it's better to sketch the scenes in the form of concept art with pencil & paper (i'm good at that) and then scan them and finalize them inside an editor like paintshop pro, photoshop, gimp etc.
Any help or opinions about what approach to choose would be much appreciated.

I took a look at DAZ. It's very impressive and modern. Quite user friendly but i'll have to experiment more with it. Blender i've read is very difficult to learn may try it thoigh.
For animation i hear thar flash, toon boom and anime pro are the best. Anybody use any of these?

2d skeleton/bone programs like anime studio pro, spine & spriter etc are ok to a certain degree but are mostly only ok for side animation (side scrolling games) as they aren't very good for animating towards or away from the camera - far as I found out when I had a mess around with them.

Sketchup is good for creating blueprint/mock-up plan of your scenes, which you can later use to base your final scenes on. It is possible to create your backgrounds in sketchup though & also ok for creating them in isometric view.

The pen & paper method you used is probably one of the more common methods... draw on pen & paper & scan it into something like photoshop which you can then draw over the top of... or even create the concept, rough sketches in photoshop or something similar with a wacom tablet or the mouse.

Everyone has their own methods & thus you should figure out what you are most comfortable with. alternatively you could dump the artwork side of your game to someone else

I have toonboom studio and find it very easy to work with. Some people like to import 3d objects in Manga Studio and ink them ...