You can model in any application, then import into Blender, and colour the model. The crucial part is the exporter: it exports a x file that is compatible with the stand-alone pixel shader converter.

Japanese artist Toshihiro Kushizaki has released the Pixel Art Shader: a free Blender shader that should convert any 3D model into old-school pixel art.

To render out a pixel art image, you just need a 3D model in .x format and a palette texture, which defines the set of colours to be used; but you can augment the result with standard texture maps, even including AO.

The image is generated in BMP format, and the results look pretty good, at least in the demo scene.

There’s a detailed online manual, but like the rest of Kushizaki’s site, it’s in Japanese, so if you’re a non-Japanese-speaker, you’ll need to navigate Google Translate.

Download the Pixel Art Shader on Toshihiro Kushizaki’s website (Automatic English translation)

Read an English-language user-contributed tutorial on using the shader

Coincidentally, a very convincing case can be made that EQ gets you much further in life rather than a high IQ.

But honestly: IQ, EQ, CQ, AQ, BQ, NQ, FQ, DQ, SQ, MQ, PQ, and all that - as long as you have passion for, and fun in whatever you do, who really cares? Human beings love to categorize and package everything in their lives (including their brain and all aspects of their consciousness) into comfortable boxes with a clear label stamped on top to comfort their small personal insecurities and anxieties.

"Am I good enough?" "Can I ever be a good designer?" "Will a high IQ help me become a better game designer?"

These are the wrong questions to ask yourself, and will only kindle more confusion. Fear and anxiety hold many people back from fulfilling their true potential.

Do you really think Peter Molyneux, Hideo Kojima, John Carmack, Ron Gilbert, Sid Meier, Takashi Tezuka, and so on, ever checked their IQ to figure out whether they would have the potential to become good game designers/developers? Of course not. It's a ludicrous thought. They all created their games because they had a passion for games, and all of them shared the same urge to create their own games, all the while pushing the envelope because they could and had buckets of fun doing it.

Just create, and find your flow. Do not second guess yourself (too much , and create the game YOU want to create, and create it for yourself, and not for anyone else.

DO IT. And if (when) you fail, DO IT AGAIN. And have fun while doing it.

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end

There are two basic methods to create 2d animations in any 3d application:

• model regular 3d characters or objects, texture, and add rigging to animate. Then animate, make sure things loop (if required), and render each frame in a sequence of files. The final result can be more realistic looking, or by utilizing a non-photo realistic style, can look like a 2d drawn result.
• draw your characters in an illustration package (such as InkScape, Illustrator, Flash), segment the characters into animate-able parts, and import each part as an image projected (uv mapped with a texture) on a flat 3d plane. Then rig the parts together for an animateable character (or object), and animate. Render each frame in a sequence of files.

The first method is more time-consuming, because you will need to model, texture, and rig a full 3d character. But if you require lots of turn-arounds, and full flexibility, this may not be possible/feasible with the second workflow. There are thousands of tutorials that demonstrate the concepts of building 3d textured animate-able characters and objects out there. For Modo, no so many, unfortunately.

The second method is very doable, and a lot of fun. Here are some examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-cl=84503534&x-yt-ts=1421914688&v=VvbhfLBIjHI

There is a nice thread on BlenderArtists, and you can even download a fully rigged 2d character for Blender that you can examine, and use as an example for Modo.

http://www.glennmelenhorst.com/misc/ble ... _028.blend

If you need more assistance with this, I recommend posting a question on the Modo forums: that community is very helpful.

Also, if 2d flat characters are your goal, spend some time investigating Spriter: it will bring in fully animated characters with a rig right into Construct2. Rather similar to the second option I mentioned, but in this case the rig is retained in Construct, resulting in much smaller file sizes.

altervista.org has been rather impressive so far for me. Completely free hosting without any strings attached - no banners, no pop-ups, and the top altervista bar can be turned off as well in the control panel.

I've been with these Italian guys for three months now, and no complaints - it feels more like a paid hosting service than a free one.

Contact them, and demand that they amend the game's attribution to you.

If they fail to do this, and do not respond at all after a couple of warnings, you have three options:

1) legal action. Expensive, and probably not an option for you;

2) do nothing. Learn to live with it;

3) start making noise on forums, blogs, anywhere and any place Atomicgamer is advertising their site (their facebook is a good place to start). This may take a while before they take note, but it can be fairly effective. Write to larger indy game blogs how Atomicgamer abused your license. And so on.

Good luck - next time be sure to include your attribution/developer info in the game itself.

I, for one, will tell other people to avoid Atomicgamer. Let us know how this pans out.

Cheers, I didn't know that Adobe had removed it - haven't checked Flash out for a while - seems like a step backwards, but it's true that the skeletal animation system in Flash did leave a lot to be desired and it was difficult to get a nice workflow going with it.

Have you ever tried Anime Studio? A very good 2d character IK system - a shame we cannot export the bone animations to fbx, and/or keep the parts. But great for animated bitmap-based character sprites.

Even though Flash has a skeletal animation system you won't be able to use it in construct, instead you will need to export each frame as a separate image...[ ]

Small correction: Flash CC and CC2014 no longer have any bones - the skeletal animation system was removed due to the shoddy implementation. And only the latest version of Flash has a good graph editor.

You also do not have to use Flash to draw your character parts for later use in Spriter - any app that you can draw in can provide those, including InkScape, Illustrator, Krita, Photoline, etc. As long as those parts can be converted to bitmap cut-outs for import in Spriter.

Hey, I actually got some responses! Thanks for the kind words - it really is just a big fake. The clouds at the top and bottom, and the shadow hide the flat texture pretty well, and it creates a good illusion of a sphere. I think the illusion would shatter without those clouds, though.

Ideally we would be able to wrap the textures around a sphere with a shader. I found this one online:

http://z0b.kapsi.fi/webgl-sphere.html

That effect does NOT rely on a 3d sphere, and would be perfect to apply the wrap-around for the textures in my example. I have been looking into the shaders, and it should not take too much of an effort to convert it to a Construct version.

If only I had the time... Perhaps later.

I have been using Altervista for a while now. No issues, FTP support, full php, quick Wordpress setup. Also no banners or advertisements (altervista bar can be turned off).

https://en.altervista.org/

Italian based, and started by an Italian student in 2000 - so they've been around for a while now.

I have had no issues so far - actually prefer this over my previous payed for host.

Rayek , thank you for your time and effort! In some cases this is even worse than the thing I experience and complain about!!! I tried some of the games at codeincomplete and the stuttering exists for me also. This indeed has to be browser related and it looks like we can't do anything about it. I hadn't had the chance to play Shank2 or Rogue Legacy, are those two HTML5/JavasSript games that run on a browser? Is this the reason that you do a performance comparison with them?

No, I wanted to compare the performance of two desktop non-browser 2d games, because I did not know if that larger interval jerk is browser related, or not. Both Shank2 and Rogue Legacy display a slight jerk every 7~8 seconds when playing.

So that one is not browser or Construct related. Something in either my hardware or software is causing that one. If/when I find out more related to that issue, I will let you know.

I also have a feeling it might be video card vendor related up to a point. What kind of video card do you have installed?

eli0s: I tested your example in Chrome, IE, FF, Opera, and the nodekit preview.

• Nodekit preview: it runs completely smooth EXCEPT for a jerk that occurs every 7 seconds or so at a regular interval.

• Chrome 37: it runs completely smooth EXCEPT for a jerk that occurs every 7 seconds or so at a regular interval.

• Chrome 38.0.2125.104 (I updated after testing in v37): much jerkier than v37. There is still the regular interval jerk every 7 seconds, but also smaller erratic jerks were introduced after updating to the latest version. Quite worrying.

• Firefox 33: initially quite jerky with bouts of smoothness, then after some time it becomes quite smooth BUT jerks that are similar to Chrome occur, and these are quite erratic and ugly looking. Worse, at times the player completely disappears for a while, only to re-appear later (can last a second or two). When the jerks occur at the same moment the collision is supposed to occur between the player sprite and the wall, the sprite overshoots the wall, and disappears!

This is not only a visual issue, but potentially can break your game completely. This happened one time in Opera as well.

• Opera: jerky when it loads up initially, then settles down in a regular smooth and jerky movement cycle that takes ~.3 sec smooth, jerk, ~.3 sec smooth, jerk. Every 15 or so jerks there is a larger jerk at a regular interval, just like Chrome.

• IE 11: runs completely smooth EXCEPT for that jerk again that occurs every 7 seconds or so at a regular interval.

To see if the browsers needed more 'power', I assigned the highest priority to the execution of each browser in Windows. No difference (except that almost 10% of cpu power was utilized, compared to at most 2~3% at the default priority. (Done with Process Explorer.)

Now, to test if this regular larger interval jerk is caused by something specific to Construct, I also tested this javascript Gauntlet found here: http://codeincomplete.com/games/

I get similar jerks in all the browsers.

Then I decided to test Shank2 (2d scrolling beat'm up). Smooth, BUT again that larger interval jerk DID occur even in Shank2 (which plays at full screen).

Finally, I tested Rogue Legacy, and yes, there is that larger interval jerk again. In the course of all the action in both games you do not notice it, but once you are aware of it, it does irritate a bit.

Anyway, on my system the major jerk is not caused by html5/js or Construct, it seems. In certain browsers jerky movement is introduced, though, and that seems to be browser dependent.

Lastly, I would be interested in seeing more formal testing done related to this issue. For example, I wonder whether my system's video card may be the culprit as far as that larger interval jerk is concerned. I have not noticed it happening in 3d games, though.