Custom 3D Animated Renders

this thread was better when it was for fun rather than to satisfy a bunch of lunatics' hunger for showdown to have jojo poses in it
Let's make it fun to give it meaning again! Stop taking requests for one. DJ, share a basic Blender tutorial with everyone, make it be every Pokémon instead of a select few, and when we get the Gen 8 models, expand the thread to be making X Y sprite/ model renders instead of just remaking, I'd happily post Gen 8 mons.
 

DJTHED

Amateur 3D Animator
is a Top Artist
Let's make it fun to give it meaning again! Stop taking requests for one. DJ, share a basic Blender tutorial with everyone, make it be every Pokémon instead of a select few, and when we get the Gen 8 models, expand the thread to be making X Y sprite/ model renders instead of just remaking, I'd happily post Gen 8 mons.
You don't need to be ordering me around lol. Even so, I've got other things to do nowadays as I've mentioned before a few months ago in this thread.
 
You don't need to be ordering me around lol. Even so, I've got other things to do nowadays as I've mentioned before a few months ago in this thread.
Wasn't trying to order, might have come that way, just trying to make suggestions, it might help the thread be more active if more people knew how to make their own renders. As another Blender user, I think that people just never try it so they don't understand how fun it is to use and how easy it is to actually use. I don't have filming software so I couldn't post a tutorial. Also, sorry for coming off as rude, you were actually one of the people that got me into Blender.
 

DJTHED

Amateur 3D Animator
is a Top Artist
Wasn't trying to order, might have come that way, just trying to make suggestions, it might help the thread be more active if more people knew how to make their own renders. As another Blender user, I think that people just never try it so they don't understand how fun it is to use and how easy it is to actually use. I don't have filming software so I couldn't post a tutorial. Also, sorry for coming off as rude, you were actually one of the people that got me into Blender.
Well, I do have this video tutorial I made in 2015 about how to get the look of the renders I made. It is quite old, and I think I added a few steps to the process I took since I made that video, but it all can still be applied today in Blender before version 2.8. There really isn't much else I can do myself regarding this thread nowadays.
 
Well, I do have this video tutorial I made in 2015 about how to get the look of the renders I made. It is quite old, and I think I added a few steps to the process I took since I made that video, but it all can still be applied today in Blender before version 2.8. There really isn't much else I can do myself regarding this thread nowadays.
Okay, I understand, that tutorial is pretty old. It's hard to keep updating the tutorials when Blender keeps updating.
 

DJTHED

Amateur 3D Animator
is a Top Artist
I don't suppose that there's a local battle simulator that's recently been in need for 3DS style animated sprites/renders for Gen 8 Pokemon...?



There's a potential possibility that I might be able to provide animated renders using the original idle animations from the games, depending on how well I'm able to rip the animations and import them into Blender. If not, at the very least I could provide still renders that imitate their idle stance from the games, just with no animation (because I'm not going to hand animate them all regardless; far too much work. Will only be able to provide animated renders if I'm able to work out how to get animation files from the games working in Blender).

I've also cleaned up my methods of generating outlines for Pokemon. The thickness should be way more consistent at 1px all around, and the outline color is now based on proximity of the colors of the model, just like in the games.

The one main downside is that the SwSh textures, while are very close in style to the 3DS textures, have thinner outlines on their textures. It's kind of minor issue in my opinion, but it will make some details on the SwSh models a bit harder to see when rendered in 3DS style at the low resolutions required to stay consistent with the existing battle sprites that are being used already.
 

DJTHED

Amateur 3D Animator
is a Top Artist
Got the Gen 8 Starter trio shaded!

(Original Smogon used Gen 1 starter "Sprites", used here for comparing scale)

(Blender Rendered Gen 8 starters in my newly revamped 3DS mimicking shaders and composites)

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(Larger Blender Renders of the Gen 8 starters with 2px outline thickness)


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Not looking too shabby I say. I really would like to see Showdown to keep its consistent look with using 3DS style renders, and the only way to do that is to make new renders of the Gen 8 Pokemon ourselves somehow. I'm still waiting on if it's even possible to import animations ripped from the game, which then hopefully can be applied to the models' armatures in Blender. It is being looked into though by someone who has made tools to rip the models from the game in the first place. I hope that they succeed. Because honestly, it won't take that much time to churn out renders with Pokemon from Gen 8. The only roadblocks I can really foresee is nailing certain special effects some Pokemon use, especially fire/ghost effects, if there are any (haven't looked too deeply into the new Pokemon yet). Probably won't be nearly as hard to do as it was before with previous inferior methods I used to mimic the 3DS style of shading, but I still need to look into it.

I also don't suppose that, if the animation rips work out, maybe this would warrant making a new thread for? Would anyone be willing to chip in their thoughts on this? I'm also not aware if there's already existing projects that will just take screencaps from the SwSh games to get animated "sprites" of all of the Pokemon in the game (not just Gen 8 mons for the sake of consistency I would presume, if this is happening). I hope I'm not barging into anything. But I do genuinely think Showdown would work best if it kept the 3DS style shading for consistency with the entire Pokedex, as well as just considering general aesthetics and optimization (Gen 8 shading uses a lot more colors, and probably won't look very good unless the animated "sprites" get a good bump in resolution universally compared to the old 3DS style "sprites"... those are just my thoughts though).
 
Got the Gen 8 Starter trio shaded!

(Original Smogon used Gen 1 starter "Sprites", used here for comparing scale)

(Blender Rendered Gen 8 starters in my newly revamped 3DS mimicking shaders and composites)

--

(Larger Blender Renders of the Gen 8 starters with 2px outline thickness)


--

Not looking too shabby I say. I really would like to see Showdown to keep its consistent look with using 3DS style renders, and the only way to do that is to make new renders of the Gen 8 Pokemon ourselves somehow. I'm still waiting on if it's even possible to import animations ripped from the game, which then hopefully can be applied to the models' armatures in Blender. It is being looked into though by someone who has made tools to rip the models from the game in the first place. I hope that they succeed. Because honestly, it won't take that much time to churn out renders with Pokemon from Gen 8. The only roadblocks I can really foresee is nailing certain special effects some Pokemon use, especially fire/ghost effects, if there are any (haven't looked too deeply into the new Pokemon yet). Probably won't be nearly as hard to do as it was before with previous inferior methods I used to mimic the 3DS style of shading, but I still need to look into it.

I also don't suppose that, if the animation rips work out, maybe this would warrant making a new thread for? Would anyone be willing to chip in their thoughts on this? I'm also not aware if there's already existing projects that will just take screencaps from the SwSh games to get animated "sprites" of all of the Pokemon in the game (not just Gen 8 mons for the sake of consistency I would presume, if this is happening). I hope I'm not barging into anything. But I do genuinely think Showdown would work best if it kept the 3DS style shading for consistency with the entire Pokedex, as well as just considering general aesthetics and optimization (Gen 8 shading uses a lot more colors, and probably won't look very good unless the animated "sprites" get a good bump in resolution universally compared to the old 3DS style "sprites"... those are just my thoughts though).
I wish I knew a things about model ripping.
 

Zarel

Not a Yuyuko fan
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Creator of PS
Yes, this would be really nice! Especially for National Dex formats, because mixing old and new styles would make those formats especially ugly.

I think it's entirely up to you whether or not you want to make a new thread for them. If you do, though, I can manually split the thread so your posts on Gen 8 models would be moved to a new thread.
 

DJTHED

Amateur 3D Animator
is a Top Artist
Yes, this would be really nice! Especially for National Dex formats, because mixing old and new styles would make those formats especially ugly.

I think it's entirely up to you whether or not you want to make a new thread for them. If you do, though, I can manually split the thread so your posts on Gen 8 models would be moved to a new thread.
Aaaalright. I'll be making a new thread then. But I'll wait on that until the SwSh animation parsing is done, as that's still apparently being worked on, and I really won't be able to get anywhere without that.
 
Aaaalright. I'll be making a new thread then. But I'll wait on that until the SwSh animation parsing is done, as that's still apparently being worked on, and I really won't be able to get anywhere without that.
I can try and help with texturing. Making outlines bigger and stuff.
 

DJTHED

Amateur 3D Animator
is a Top Artist
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First set for the first Pokemon down for Sobble!

Still trying to nail down a process to where I can start churning these out at a more rapid pace. But for now, here's the first full set.

The animation, model, and color textures are all directly ripped and being used to create the final render (rendered and composited using Blender 100%, and then compiled into a gif using GIMP). All of these are unmodified, with the exception of some minor details in the color texture. Given that the textures from SwSh were made with the intention that they will be seen on an HD Monitor instead of a 240p handheld screen, the outlines drawn on the texture itself are quite thin, and needs to be adjusted a bit to help preserve the detail as I make these 3DS-Style renders for Gen 8 Pokemon. Here's an example of the type of modification I do.
PaintDotNet_2020-05-16_06-11-29.png
PaintDotNet_2020-05-16_06-11-18.png

The Left is the original, and the Right is after the modification. It is a bit rough (no anti-aliasing), but it gets the job done perfectly fine for the purposes of providing small animated renders.

While I'm still figuring out my process, might as well use this opportunity to see if anyone has any issues or problems with these renders regarding their viability of being implemented into Pokemon Showdown, or if there is something I can change about my process that can make implementation easier, etc., before I start churning a ton more of these out.



Also as a side note, I hold no restrictions for what people use these Gen 8 3DS Style renders for. If anyone wants to use these for content creation or whatever, feel free.
 

DJTHED

Amateur 3D Animator
is a Top Artist
Got the entire starters and their evolutions done!

Shoutouts to QxC4eva for helping me out and offloading some of the workload with the texture modifications necessary to keep the outlines baked on the textures of the Pokemon clear in these small renders.


Grookey Line:
Grookey (This render is outdated, click here for the latest render for this Pokemon):
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Thwackey (This render is outdated, click here for the latest render for this Pokemon):
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Rillaboom (This render is outdated, click here for the latest render for this Pokemon):
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Scorbunny Line:
Scorbunny (This render is outdated, click here for the latest render for this Pokemon):
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Raboot (This render is outdated, click here for the latest render for this Pokemon):
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Cinderace (This render is outdated, click here for the latest render for this Pokemon):
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Sobble Line:
Sobble (This render is outdated, click here for the latest render for this Pokemon):
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Drizzile (This render is outdated, click here for the latest render for this Pokemon):
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Inteleon (This render is outdated, click here for the latest render for this Pokemon):
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I also overhauled the OP of this thread to reflect the new direction this project is taking, so feel free to go through that if you haven't yet.
 
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Got the entire starters and their evolutions done!

Shoutouts to QxC4eva for helping me out and offloading some of the workload with the texture modifications necessary to keep the outlines baked on the textures of the Pokemon clear in these small renders.


Grookey Line:



Scorbunny Line:



Sobble Line:



I also overhauled the OP of this thread to reflect the new direction this project is taking, so feel free to go through that if you haven't yet.
Inacurate. If these truly were supposed to be 3DS style, Scorbunny wouldn't have an interesting animation.
 

DJTHED

Amateur 3D Animator
is a Top Artist
Wave 2 Done!


Skwovet Line:
Skwovet:
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Greedent:
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Rookidee Line:
Rookidee:
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Corvisquire:
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Corviknight:
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Blipbug Line:
Blipbug:
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Dottler (This one took a bit of extra work to properly implement the animated emission textures):
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Orbeetle:
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DJTHED

Amateur 3D Animator
is a Top Artist
Wave 3 Done! Actually surprised how fast we're getting through each wave (which we generally keep to be about 7-9 Pokemon).


Nickit Line:
Nickit:
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Thievul:
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Gossifleur Line:
Gossifleur:
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Eldegoss:
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Wooloo Line:
Wooloo:
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Dubwool:
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Chewtle Line:
Chewtle:
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Drednaw:
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If you do Gigantamax, how will you do it?
Gigantamax forms are low priority for me right now, and will be saved for later. Partly because of my own personal bias against Gigantamaxing in general (I'm really not a fan with the mechanics, nor the designs), and bias aside I also want to save the more complicated renders for later that probably has all kinds of animated textures and masks going on. I might also provide standard sized animated renders, and animated renders with double the width and height so that the renders actually are massive just like how they are in-game.
 
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DJTHED

Amateur 3D Animator
is a Top Artist
Fantastic work! Do you also plan on doing Galarian forms?
Yup!

You should add a section comparing your renders to the ones currently on PS, these ones look a lot cleaner imo.
Lol I suppose I could. There are some SwSh screen rips that seriously don't look right, like Skwovet

Current PS vs. Blender
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But I also don't really want to undermine the efforts people took to make the raw screen captures of the SwSh Pokemon work. I mean, there's only so much you can do to make them work. Either use the raw screen cap, shrink it down, and the lack of clear outlines will make the model really hard to read.

Or you could send the SwSh Screen cap through an edge detection filter like what I believe is what was done to all of the SwSh screen rips Showdown uses today. Some can look okay, but other problems prop up just due to the imperfect nature of doing an edge detection filter only a color image sequence. And even when the filter does look alright, they still don't fit in well with the existing 3DS screen rips for all the other Pokemon since the textures generally tend to be anti-aliased (no jagged edges on the rendered textures), contrary to how they actually would look on the 3DS, the lighting isn't consistent enough with the 3DS (especially for back sprites), etc, etc.

The edge detection I use on my renders is based on the surface normals of the model, which essentially means only the geometry of the model effects how the outlines get drawn, which is how it works in-game as well and is the ideal way to get this effect to work. But they couldn't do that without ripping the models and animations from the game, obviously, which is not something people have had access to (specifically the animations) up until very recently.
 
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