Use of 3D in the rpg makers?

I used to use rpg maker xp when I was like 14 now I'm a bit older and haven't used any of these programs in probably 6 years or so, it feels a bit pathetic even posting on these forums since I'm really above this stuff at this point. I know how to make high quality next gen models in 3d. But I'm not a very good programmer and I was just wondering if there has been any cool mod for any of the rpg makers to make it possible to insert 3d models into the games. Because I remember the "events" being very easy to use, and the text messages are very functional too. It's just the 2d graphics that are off putting. Is there some way to breach the third dimension? Besides rendering out sprites of 3d models and use them in battles or perhaps on the maps.

No.


All you can do is to make them into 2d sprites and use the rpg maker models. RPG Maker and 3D is not something that matches well.

No, the RMs intentionally stayed 2D. You can use rendered 2D-Pictures of 3D models, but not 3D-Models themselves.


Edit: ninja'd

I'm trying to think of how you would achieve the illusion of 3d in the rpg maker. Remember the old final fantasy games with the pre rendered backgrounds. What if you put a panorama image as a background, this would be the landscape that the player would walk through. Then somehow make the character sprite change size as he moves towards the horizon or up the 2d grid. At the squares at the bottom the sprite would be big and at the squares at the top the sprite would be small. 


Could the character walk in 8 directions with pixel movement, so he isn't restricted to stand in one of the squares. I think it could be possible to have this work. You use the second layer to add sprites that the character could walk behind. Render out a special sprite from a 3d character and you would end up with something that look very much 3d right. It would be easy to fake 3d in battles, you just render out frames from a 3d character who walks into the picture towards the sprites that are lined up in the distance.


Anyway if someone is good at scripting I could help you out with the 3d graphics. It should be possible with a bit of work to create something that looks nearly identical to final fantasy 7, 8 or 9. So anyone up for the challenge?

Those old games used 3d engines despite the pre-rendered backgrounds. Yes, you can fake it in a 2d environment, but you'll spend so much extra time and energy on it to end with a buggy/laggy game that it's just easier to learn/use a 3d engine. If you want to use 3d assets in a 2d game, I suggest you to go with a orthogonal projection  :)

Whenever 3D comes up, I still think of the old re/blue glasses.

Me and an internet programmer made this about a year ago, I did the camera work and the graphics, looking pretty bad especially the menus.


https://vid.me/e08L


The rpg maker has most of the difficult stuff already done, the menus, the messages, the battles, the stats. But the pixelated graphics look terrible, anyone wanna team up and try to make a small 3D rpg maker game. First thing would be to render out a 3d character sprite that can face 8 directions and move pixel by pixel around the map. The tileset would be very easy to render out, you just put a camera at a certain angle facing the ground and place all your models right under it, 3d graphics makes it possible for the tiles to receive realistic light, so all objects in the tileset would be realistically lit from a single light source, the sun. I think you could even put the shadow cast by the light source into the tileset, making it look very much like a 3d game.


So if anyone is a programmer, likes to play around with scripts I'll do the graphics. [IMG]//rmwforums.s3.amazonaws.com/emoticons/default_wink.gif[/IMG]

I think that making it render 3D graphics more complicated than the mechanical aspect such as battles, messages, menus....


The effort you have to do to put 3D into the maker is far higher than the effort to put the mechanical aspects on a 3D engine.

Actually doing all the programming for an rpg game in a 3d engine is much work. Something as simple as having a character move and attack an enemy, take into account how much defence the enemy has, all the menus, all that stuff is a lot of work. Weeks of work for a programmer, rpg maker has all that stuff figured out already. That's what they're selling you, the rpg maker.


Ortographic 3d backgrounds without perspective could still look quite good if done right. I guess it would look something like this. So anyone wanna help out with all the scripting that would be required, the menus would have to match the neat looking graphics, the default cartoony font and look to all the windows would have to be slightly changed.

And coding the 3D rendering on an engine with ZERO support for 3D is quite simple right? About half ot the code of the maker is used for the display. And it just for 2D, so making a whole 3D library for RPG Maker would be FAR more work.


Yes, by your perspective it is easier because you're not the one who will create the 3D library. But it really seems that you have no idea of how complex a 3D gaming library can be. Just look at some 3D engine, such as unreal, only the 3D egine is FAR bigger that the whole rpg maker.


But there is ZERO support for 3d, so it would be needed MONTHS of work to create this 3d library that don't exist. You're looking at a perspective as there is a 3D engine available, but there is not, and it would be needed to be created. And this 3D engine would be far more complex to create than creating gaming mechanics.


Well, whatever, it seems that you don't have any idea about what you're talking about.

Actually... you don't have to create a 3D engine from scratch. Ogre is an open source 3D engine. It's cross-platform, supports Ruby, Javascript, and more. It even does 2D, for menus and text for example. I'm even a little surprised nobody has attempted to use it already. To be sure, it would be a lot of work to change all the rendering calls to use the Ogre DLL, but far less than making your own engine.