Custom 3D Animated Renders

[Codraroll]

Hi! Sorry to bump this thread, but the topic of poorly animated Pokémon models came up in a thread in Orange Islands. Pointing to your thread to show how it should be done felt very natural. However, the OP seems to display the work in a somewhat... untidy fashion. There are links to the final version of every model, but they are rarely compared with the originals they are based on. Would it be possible to implement a comprehensive before/after section, showing all the "official" renders next to the ones you made?

Like this? I've tried my best to collect the final versions of your models, based on the links in the OP:

Game Freak vs. DJTHED

Original --> New

-->

-->

-->

Back- and Shiny sprites

-->

Back- and Shiny sprites

-->

Back- and Shiny sprites

-->

Back- and Shiny sprites

-->

Back- and Shiny sprites

-->

Back- and Shiny sprites

-->

Back- and Shiny sprites

-->

Back- and Shiny sprites

-->

Back- and Shiny sprites

(no ripped sprite) -->

Back- and Shiny sprites

Substitute entry- and exit animations

And here is the code for the entire thing:

[hide="Game Freak vs. DJTHED"]
Original --> New
[img]http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/leafeon.gif[/img] --> [img]http://i.imgur.com/Gt9dXWg.gif[/img]

[img]http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/fennekin.gif[/img] --> [img]http://i.imgur.com/LLwRmIi.gif[/img]

[img]http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/gallade.gif[/img] --> [img]http://i.imgur.com/htT81Wh.gif[/img]
[url=http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/custom-3d-animated-renders.3526922/page-3#post-5996892]Back- and Shiny sprites[/url]

[img]http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/snorlax.gif[/img] --> [img]http://i.imgur.com/uYbhznj.gif[/img]
[url=http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/custom-3d-animated-renders.3526922/page-3#post-5996892]Back- and Shiny sprites[/url]

[img]http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/umbreon.gif[/img] --> [img]http://i.imgur.com/GxHgiGz.gif[/img]
[url=http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/custom-3d-animated-renders.3526922/page-3#post-5996892]Back- and Shiny sprites[/url]

[img]http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/absol-mega.gif[/img] --> [img]http://i.imgur.com/FAUOrVi.gif[/img]
[url=http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/custom-3d-animated-renders.3526922/page-2#post-5994081]Back- and Shiny sprites[/url]

[img]http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/tyranitar-mega.gif[/img] --> [img]http://i.imgur.com/pqBOUv6.gif[/img]
[url=http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/custom-3d-animated-renders.3526922/page-3#post-6017491]Back- and Shiny sprites[/url]

[img]http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/vaporeon.gif[/img] --> [img]http://i.imgur.com/NSOLuNK.gif[/img]
[url=http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/custom-3d-animated-renders.3526922/page-4#post-6044020]Back- and Shiny sprites[/url]

[img]http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/typhlosion.gif[/img] --> [img]http://i.imgur.com/5atlAX5.gif[/img]
[url=http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/custom-3d-animated-renders.3526922/page-5#post-6236265]Back- and Shiny sprites[/url]

[img]http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/gardevoir.gif[/img] --> [img]http://i.imgur.com/Dns4Ah3.gif[/img]
[url=http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/custom-3d-animated-renders.3526922/page-5#post-6216787]Back- and Shiny sprites[/url]

[img]http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/pidgeot-mega.gif[/img] --> [img]http://i.imgur.com/5sNH214.gif[/img]
[url=http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/custom-3d-animated-renders.3526922/page-7#post-6444931]Back- and Shiny sprites[/url]

(no sprite available) --> [img]http://i.imgur.com/B0QEASW.gif[/img]
[url=http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/custom-3d-animated-renders.3526922/page-8#post-6563948]Back- and Shiny sprites[/url]

[url=http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/custom-3d-animated-renders.3526922/page-7#post-6548604]Substitute entry- and exit animations[/url]
[/hide]

 

[DJTHED]

Hi! Sorry to bump this thread, but the topic of poorly animated Pokémon models came up in a thread in Orange Islands. Pointing to your thread to show how it should be done felt very natural. However, the OP seems to display the work in a somewhat... untidy fashion. There are links to the final version of every model, but they are rarely compared with the originals they are based on. Would it be possible to implement a comprehensive before/after section, showing all the "official" renders next to the ones you made?

Like this? I've tried my best to collect the final versions of your models, based on the links in the OP:

Maybe when and if I get back into this I'll update the OP again... We'll see.
Also the Pikachu Belle animation you have as the original is also my own render. I was requested to make a Pikachu Belle (and friends) animations because no one ripped them from ORAS. So yeah, those are both my own.

 

[Codraroll]

Maybe when and if I get back into this I'll update the OP again... We'll see.
Also the Pikachu Belle animation you have as the original is also my own render. I was requested to make a Pikachu Belle (and friends) animations because no one ripped them from ORAS. So yeah, those are both my own.

Ah, that explains why they look so similar!

By the way, good luck with whatever you are doing now! Your art is highly and deeply appreciated on these forums, but we shouldn't be so selfish and keep you for ourselves!

 

[Andrew1207]

Can you help me do a little bit of change to my Custom Shadow Mewtwo?

Edit the model like this:

164 then negative

 

[Pokemon_gold]

I am doing a 3d sprite of lucario that remembers this position :

but I'm a wimp with the computer ...can You help me?

 

[DJTHED]

So, some of my renders from this thread have been implemented into showdown. Great! And... Not so great. Looking back at some of my old animations (crazy to think this thread is over 3 years old now, but anyway), I noticed some glaring flaws that got in the way of them looking good enough to be used on showdown. So I decided to implement some changes to some of the animations to look much more appealing and hopefully appease a few complaints I've seen.

Typhlosions thicc right leg has been fixed:

-->

Thicc boy is gone. :c (For the better tho)

And his back sprite's camera angle has been adjusted to show his head better through his flames:

-->

Shinies:

Gardevoir's overly swaying arms and head have been leveled off and toned down:

-->

I still absolutely love the base pose, being based off of the Pokemon Platinum sprite, but looking back at this old animation I couldn't unsee the horribleness of the overall wobbly nature of the previous animation. Now it's overall much more level and controlled... Ahhh, much better. (Also her shading is fixed)

Back Sprite:

-->

Shinies:

--

Sooo yeah! I'm not necessarily back, I'm still pretty busy with my own things. But if anyone has any problems with these animations or sprites, please let me know here! I know a lot of these are reaching a lot more people, so I'm ready to accept more feedback for the ones that are currently being used. I'm not in a position to accept requests of making new animations of mons I have not rigged and set up for, I don't have the time for that, but I can make the time to make more adjustments to ones I've already done.

 

[Kapten Oldrum]

Welp, considering Smogon won't let you change to vanilla models, I'll guess I'll give my two cents and critique your work thus far.

Gallade: Looks extremely awkward, his arm clashes with his body and it's hard to see what he's actually trying to do. Personally the vanilla model was fine. Could either revert or take a whole approach on it instead of fixing, IMO. Possibly into this.

Absol: Legs are SUPER awful. Why does it have spiky fur? Stance doesn't look menacing at all, makes it look like it's stretching.

Gardevoir: I know what you were going with this, but changing it's model to it's Platinum sprite doesn't look well at all. Makes it look like a waiter/butler holding a towel. There are other alternatives, such as it's RS sprite which is basically the same but the arm is lowered.

Umbreon: REALLY wobbly, makes it look dizzy.

Typhlosion: ..Looks the same as it's vanilla model but with a T-pose. Not a huge fan of this at ALL.

I understand that you're a novice and you're trying to improve though, but if I'm going to be perfectly blunt there's still a lot more to improve on. Until then, I feel like the custom models should be an alternative in Pokémon Showdown and not ''forced'' as a choice unless you pick Gen 5 sprites.

inb4 people PMing me saying how I'm bullying for giving not positive critique (which actually happened before I had to re-do my comment).

 

[TacoLugia]

this is just fire

 

[Josh Putt]

How about Base Absol for an overhaul. Love the Mega Absol overhaul.

 

[WendrewITA]

Welp, considering Smogon won't let you change to vanilla models, I'll guess I'll give my two cents and critique your work thus far.

Gallade: Looks extremely awkward, his arm clashes with his body and it's hard to see what he's actually trying to do. Personally the vanilla model was fine. Could either revert or take a whole approach on it instead of fixing, IMO. Possibly into this.

Absol: Legs are SUPER awful. Why does it have spiky fur? Stance doesn't look menacing at all, makes it look like it's stretching.

Gardevoir: I know what you were going with this, but changing it's model to it's Platinum sprite doesn't look well at all. Makes it look like a waiter/butler holding a towel. There are other alternatives, such as it's RS sprite which is basically the same but the arm is lowered.

Umbreon: REALLY wobbly, makes it look dizzy.

Typhlosion: ..Looks the same as it's vanilla model but with a T-pose. Not a huge fan of this at ALL.

I understand that you're a novice and you're trying to improve though, but if I'm going to be perfectly blunt there's still a lot more to improve on. Until then, I feel like the custom models should be an alternative in Pokémon Showdown and not ''forced'' as a choice unless you pick Gen 5 sprites.

inb4 people PMing me saying how I'm bullying for giving not positive critique (which actually happened before I had to re-do my comment).

I disagree on everything, especially Typhlosion, since its vanilla model has no flames, making this one a huge improvement. But you're right on the fact that we should be able to switch to vanilla models.
Anyways, after falling in love with these new animations, I decided to try myself. This was my first experience with 3d animation, so I just tried my best. Keep in mind these are made to be used for Showdown, so yeah, if you like em (you won't like em though) feel free to implement them!

Charizard

Charizard is my favorite mon (unoriginal, right?), but I really, really hate its 3d animation. When DJTHED said he wasn't gonna make him, I just decided to try to make him myself. Now this may not be the best animation ever (again, my first experience with 3d animation), but I still hope it gets in.

Btw, I know this isn't my thread, but I decided to drop these here anyway. I'll remove them if DJTHED asks me to do it.

 

[Codraroll]

Charizard is my favorite mon (unoriginal, right?), but I really, really hate its 3d animation. When DJTHED said he wasn't gonna make him, I just decided to try to make him myself. Now this may not be the best animation ever (again, my first experience with 3d animation), but I still hope it gets in.

The picture isn't showing for me, are you sure it was uploaded correctly? Anyway, if you want to keep doing this, I think a thread of your own would be ideal! DJTHED has shown that such re-animation efforts clearly are appreciated by the community in here, so it would just be great if more people were to do it! Plus, it'd be a great place to gather feedback for your designs, which would be a little out of place in DJTHED's thread.

 

[WendrewITA]

The picture isn't showing for me, are you sure it was uploaded correctly? Anyway, if you want to keep doing this, I think a thread of your own would be ideal! DJTHED has shown that such re-animation efforts clearly are appreciated by the community in here, so it would just be great if more people were to do it! Plus, it'd be a great place to gather feedback for your designs, which would be a little out of place in DJTHED's thread.

to be honest, I don't think I'm gonna keep doing this. I might do MegaCharizard X, maybe Blastoise or Swellow and then stop. Now I'm gonna try to upload it correctly. I'm having some trouble with this forum...

 

[WendrewITA]

The picture isn't showing for me, are you sure it was uploaded correctly? Anyway, if you want to keep doing this, I think a thread of your own would be ideal! DJTHED has shown that such re-animation efforts clearly are appreciated by the community in here, so it would just be great if more people were to do it! Plus, it'd be a great place to gather feedback for your designs, which would be a little out of place in DJTHED's thread.

ok, hopefully you can see it now!

 

[Codraroll]

to be honest, I don't think I'm gonna keep doing this. I might do MegaCharizard X, maybe Blastoise or Swellow and then stop. Now I'm gonna try to upload it correctly. I'm having some trouble with this forum...

I don't think you're committing to anything by making a thread. Even if it's just there for four designs, it still provides an appropriate place for people to view those four designs and provide feedback to them. And who knows, maybe you'll be inspired to do more afterwards?

 

[WendrewITA]

I don't think you're committing to anything by making a thread. Even if it's just there for four designs, it still provides an appropriate place for people to view those four designs and provide feedback to them. And who knows, maybe you'll be inspired to do more afterwards?

Alright, will do!

 

[Kapten Oldrum]

I disagree on everything, especially Typhlosion, since its vanilla model has no flames, making this one a huge improvement. But you're right on the fact that we should be able to switch to vanilla models.
Anyways, after falling in love with these new animations, I decided to try myself. This was my first experience with 3d animation, so I just tried my best. Keep in mind these are made to be used for Showdown, so yeah, if you like em (you won't like em though) feel free to implement them!

Charizard

View attachment 131795View attachment 131796
View attachment 131797View attachment 131798
Charizard is my favorite mon (unoriginal, right?), but I really, really hate its 3d animation. When DJTHED said he wasn't gonna make him, I just decided to try to make him myself. Now this may not be the best animation ever (again, my first experience with 3d animation), but I still hope it gets in.

Btw, I know this isn't my thread, but I decided to drop these here anyway. I'll remove them if DJTHED asks me to do it.

Flames don't really make models ''better'' or ''worse'' when the fire itself looks like a slapstick comic bubble to indicate that someone's been punched. Either way, not gonna turn this into a huge argument.

Interesting Charizard model, but the neck seen a tad too stretched out and his wings too elevated up.

 

[WendrewITA]

Flames don't really make models ''better'' or ''worse'' when the fire itself looks like a slapstick comic bubble to indicate that someone's been punched. Either way, not gonna turn this into a huge argument.

Interesting Charizard model, but the neck seen a tad too stretched out and his wings too elevated up.

Uh, the Charizard model is the XY one... just like the Typhlosion one, including the flames. I just animated what we got from the game.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

Flames don't really make models ''better'' or ''worse'' when the fire itself looks like a slapstick comic bubble to indicate that someone's been punched. Either way, not gonna turn this into a huge argument.

Dude, Typhlosion has always had a cartoon punch bubble coming out of its neck. I'm not saying the flames don't look dumb, but you can't fault the custom animator for that.

 

[DJTHED]

Anyways, after falling in love with these new animations, I decided to try myself. This was my first experience with 3d animation, so I just tried my best. Keep in mind these are made to be used for Showdown, so yeah, if you like em (you won't like em though) feel free to implement them!

Charizard

View attachment 131795View attachment 131796
View attachment 131797View attachment 131798
Charizard is my favorite mon (unoriginal, right?), but I really, really hate its 3d animation. When DJTHED said he wasn't gonna make him, I just decided to try to make him myself. Now this may not be the best animation ever (again, my first experience with 3d animation), but I still hope it gets in.

Btw, I know this isn't my thread, but I decided to drop these here anyway. I'll remove them if DJTHED asks me to do it.

Nah, don't worry about it. In fact, I'd be happy to share some feedback! Let's begin:

--

I can't remember if I went over this too well in my video from a long time ago, but it looks like you haven't disabled Ambient Occlusion, which I can mostly tell looking at Charizard's non-shiny back sprite. You can disable that by mimicking these world settings:

Spoiler

And it should transform like this:

---> To this --->

--

The next big thing is that the toon shader you're using doesn't look fully set up. The transition between light and dark is not supposed to be smooth at all. It's supposed to be a very sharp transition. I'm noticing this most on the top of the blue part of his wings as they move. Make sure the "Smooth" setting in the shader options is set all the way down. If that doesn't work, let me know and I'll try to help you further.

Spoiler

--

And the last major critique I have is Charizard's fire. The main reason I denied any requests to make a Charizard render, or any render that has complex fire geometry (Typhlosion was an exception due to how simple his was), was because I could never find a way to get Blender to render them properly. ESPECIALLY with the Freestyle outlines not working well with it. Unfortunately I don't really have any solutions for this, even now after all this time. Blender has a few limitations that prevent stuff like this from working well. But I can't imagine a render like this to get accepted for as long as that fire doesn't look consistent to how it looks in the games. If this is something you think you can look into yourself, I would encourage you do so.

--

Now I have a few minor critiques.

I think your render is slightly too large. Comparing the original with yours, you should be able to tell that Charizard's overall body in yours looks a bit too large in scale to the original.

--

And there's also the subtle amount of noise that are in your renders, which is more clear in the shiny variants. The fact that the toon shading is too smooth on your render has a bit to do with this, but I recommend that you use GIMP to compile your gifs if you aren't already. I've always used that and the gifs that come out have always turned out well without any weird artifact issues that were unrelated to the original render.

--

Alright, one more thing. The positioning of the light source could use some work . Whether this is true or not in your scene, to me it looks like in your front sprite renders the light source is coming directly from the camera, or at least very close to it. Definitely don't want to do that! It makes the renders look a bit more flat that they should. Move the light source up more and move it to the side. Moving it up especially will help your back sprite look not completely in the shade.

--

There's still a few things I'd change, but that's the bulk of what I have to say for now. I'd definitely like to give some animation critiques as well, but I want to focus on getting your render settings right first.

==

Welp, considering Smogon won't let you change to vanilla models, I'll guess I'll give my two cents and critique your work thus far.

Gallade: Looks extremely awkward, his arm clashes with his body and it's hard to see what he's actually trying to do. Personally the vanilla model was fine. Could either revert or take a whole approach on it instead of fixing, IMO. Possibly into this.

Absol: Legs are SUPER awful. Why does it have spiky fur? Stance doesn't look menacing at all, makes it look like it's stretching.

Gardevoir: I know what you were going with this, but changing it's model to it's Platinum sprite doesn't look well at all. Makes it look like a waiter/butler holding a towel. There are other alternatives, such as it's RS sprite which is basically the same but the arm is lowered.

Umbreon: REALLY wobbly, makes it look dizzy.

Typhlosion: ..Looks the same as it's vanilla model but with a T-pose. Not a huge fan of this at ALL.

I understand that you're a novice and you're trying to improve though, but if I'm going to be perfectly blunt there's still a lot more to improve on. Until then, I feel like the custom models should be an alternative in Pokémon Showdown and not ''forced'' as a choice unless you pick Gen 5 sprites.

inb4 people PMing me saying how I'm bullying for giving not positive critique (which actually happened before I had to re-do my comment).

I definitely can see where you are coming from with some of these critiques, especially with Umbreon and Gallade, but some of what you said is a bit odd. For example, Absol has always had spiky fur. The model I used was ripped directly from the 3DS games, and I have not modified the model at all in terms of it's mesh/geometry. All I've done is done some reposing and have done my best to mimic the rendering style of the game, but the model itself is from Gamefreak themselves, and unmodified.

The same can be said for Typhlosion's flames you mentioned in a later post. The flame geometry and textures were, again, directly used from the game itself, and is exactly how it would look in-game. Critiquing stuff like that is not really a Critique towards my work, it's more of a critique towards Gamefreak themselves, which obviously doesn't invalidate the critique, but it's not something I can really address. I can't just go changing the design of the Pokemon and deviate from the source material like that. New poses are one thing, changing the source models and textures is another.

But yeah, I think I might address Gallade and Umbreon soon. They were one of my earlier animations from all those years ago, and it doesn't surprise me that Umbreon would feel wobbly (just like my old Gardevoir render), and the awkward posing for Gallade.

 

[WendrewITA]

Nah, don't worry about it. In fact, I'd be happy to share some feedback! Let's begin:

--

I can't remember if I went over this too well in my video from a long time ago, but it looks like you haven't disabled Ambient Occlusion, which I can mostly tell looking at Charizard's non-shiny back sprite. You can disable that by mimicking these world settings:

Spoiler

And it should transform like this:

---> To this --->

--

The next big thing is that the toon shader you're using doesn't look fully set up. The transition between light and dark is not supposed to be smooth at all. It's supposed to be a very sharp transition. I'm noticing this most on the top of the blue part of his wings as they move. Make sure the "Smooth" setting in the shader options is set all the way down. If that doesn't work, let me know and I'll try to help you further.

Spoiler

--

And the last major critique I have is Charizard's fire. The main reason I denied any requests to make a Charizard render, or any render that has complex fire geometry (Typhlosion was an exception due to how simple his was), was because I could never find a way to get Blender to render them properly. ESPECIALLY with the Freestyle outlines not working well with it. Unfortunately I don't really have any solutions for this, even now after all this time. Blender has a few limitations that prevent stuff like this from working well. But I can't imagine a render like this to get accepted for as long as that fire doesn't look consistent to how it looks in the games. If this is something you think you can look into yourself, I would encourage you do so.

--

Now I have a few minor critiques.

I think your render is slightly too large. Comparing the original with yours, you should be able to tell that Charizard's overall body in yours looks a bit too large in scale to the original.

--

And there's also the subtle amount of noise that are in your renders, which is more clear in the shiny variants. The fact that the toon shading is too smooth on your render has a bit to do with this, but I recommend that you use GIMP to compile your gifs if you aren't already. I've always used that and the gifs that come out have always turned out well without any weird artifact issues that were unrelated to the original render.

--

Alright, one more thing. The positioning of the light source could use some work . Whether this is true or not in your scene, to me it looks like in your front sprite renders the light source is coming directly from the camera, or at least very close to it. Definitely don't want to do that! It makes the renders look a bit more flat that they should. Move the light source up more and move it to the side. Moving it up especially will help your back sprite look not completely in the shade.

--

There's still a few things I'd change, but that's the bulk of what I have to say for now. I'd definitely like to give some animation critiques as well, but I want to focus on getting your render settings right first.

==



I definitely can see where you are coming from with some of these critiques, especially with Umbreon and Gallade, but some of what you said is a bit odd. For example, Absol has always had spiky fur. The model I used was ripped directly from the 3DS games, and I have not modified the model at all in terms of it's mesh/geometry. All I've done is done some reposing and have done my best to mimic the rendering style of the game, but the model itself is from Gamefreak themselves, and unmodified.

The same can be said for Typhlosion's flames you mentioned in a later post. The flame geometry and textures were, again, directly used from the game itself, and is exactly how it would look in-game. Critiquing stuff like that is not really a Critique towards my work, it's more of a critique towards Gamefreak themselves, which obviously doesn't invalidate the critique, but it's not something I can really address. I can't just go changing the design of the Pokemon and deviate from the source material like that. New poses are one thing, changing the source models and textures is another.

But yeah, I think I might address Gallade and Umbreon soon. They were one of my earlier animations from all those years ago, and it doesn't surprise me that Umbreon would feel wobbly (just like my old Gardevoir render), and the awkward posing for Gallade.

Thank you! I'll try to fix these as soon as possible.
Also, I just noticed a problem myself: when the animation restarts, the flame doesn't really loop well.
Oh, and if you could give me some animation tips too, I'd be glad!

 

[Kapten Oldrum]

Nah, don't worry about it. In fact, I'd be happy to share some feedback! Let's begin:

--

I can't remember if I went over this too well in my video from a long time ago, but it looks like you haven't disabled Ambient Occlusion, which I can mostly tell looking at Charizard's non-shiny back sprite. You can disable that by mimicking these world settings:

Spoiler

And it should transform like this:

---> To this --->

--

The next big thing is that the toon shader you're using doesn't look fully set up. The transition between light and dark is not supposed to be smooth at all. It's supposed to be a very sharp transition. I'm noticing this most on the top of the blue part of his wings as they move. Make sure the "Smooth" setting in the shader options is set all the way down. If that doesn't work, let me know and I'll try to help you further.

Spoiler

--

And the last major critique I have is Charizard's fire. The main reason I denied any requests to make a Charizard render, or any render that has complex fire geometry (Typhlosion was an exception due to how simple his was), was because I could never find a way to get Blender to render them properly. ESPECIALLY with the Freestyle outlines not working well with it. Unfortunately I don't really have any solutions for this, even now after all this time. Blender has a few limitations that prevent stuff like this from working well. But I can't imagine a render like this to get accepted for as long as that fire doesn't look consistent to how it looks in the games. If this is something you think you can look into yourself, I would encourage you do so.

--

Now I have a few minor critiques.

I think your render is slightly too large. Comparing the original with yours, you should be able to tell that Charizard's overall body in yours looks a bit too large in scale to the original.

--

And there's also the subtle amount of noise that are in your renders, which is more clear in the shiny variants. The fact that the toon shading is too smooth on your render has a bit to do with this, but I recommend that you use GIMP to compile your gifs if you aren't already. I've always used that and the gifs that come out have always turned out well without any weird artifact issues that were unrelated to the original render.

--

Alright, one more thing. The positioning of the light source could use some work . Whether this is true or not in your scene, to me it looks like in your front sprite renders the light source is coming directly from the camera, or at least very close to it. Definitely don't want to do that! It makes the renders look a bit more flat that they should. Move the light source up more and move it to the side. Moving it up especially will help your back sprite look not completely in the shade.

--

There's still a few things I'd change, but that's the bulk of what I have to say for now. I'd definitely like to give some animation critiques as well, but I want to focus on getting your render settings right first.

==



I definitely can see where you are coming from with some of these critiques, especially with Umbreon and Gallade, but some of what you said is a bit odd. For example, Absol has always had spiky fur. The model I used was ripped directly from the 3DS games, and I have not modified the model at all in terms of it's mesh/geometry. All I've done is done some reposing and have done my best to mimic the rendering style of the game, but the model itself is from Gamefreak themselves, and unmodified.

The same can be said for Typhlosion's flames you mentioned in a later post. The flame geometry and textures were, again, directly used from the game itself, and is exactly how it would look in-game. Critiquing stuff like that is not really a Critique towards my work, it's more of a critique towards Gamefreak themselves, which obviously doesn't invalidate the critique, but it's not something I can really address. I can't just go changing the design of the Pokemon and deviate from the source material like that. New poses are one thing, changing the source models and textures is another.

But yeah, I think I might address Gallade and Umbreon soon. They were one of my earlier animations from all those years ago, and it doesn't surprise me that Umbreon would feel wobbly (just like my old Gardevoir render), and the awkward posing for Gallade.

Absol has always had spiky fur, yes, but look at it's backsprite; specifically it's legs. That's something that should be fairly easy to fix.

 

[Josh Putt]

I think so. Well done on Mega Absol. Used the Pokémon in battle.

 

[WendrewITA]

Nah, don't worry about it. In fact, I'd be happy to share some feedback! Let's begin:

--

I can't remember if I went over this too well in my video from a long time ago, but it looks like you haven't disabled Ambient Occlusion, which I can mostly tell looking at Charizard's non-shiny back sprite. You can disable that by mimicking these world settings:

Spoiler

And it should transform like this:

---> To this --->

--

The next big thing is that the toon shader you're using doesn't look fully set up. The transition between light and dark is not supposed to be smooth at all. It's supposed to be a very sharp transition. I'm noticing this most on the top of the blue part of his wings as they move. Make sure the "Smooth" setting in the shader options is set all the way down. If that doesn't work, let me know and I'll try to help you further.

Spoiler

--

And the last major critique I have is Charizard's fire. The main reason I denied any requests to make a Charizard render, or any render that has complex fire geometry (Typhlosion was an exception due to how simple his was), was because I could never find a way to get Blender to render them properly. ESPECIALLY with the Freestyle outlines not working well with it. Unfortunately I don't really have any solutions for this, even now after all this time. Blender has a few limitations that prevent stuff like this from working well. But I can't imagine a render like this to get accepted for as long as that fire doesn't look consistent to how it looks in the games. If this is something you think you can look into yourself, I would encourage you do so.

--

Now I have a few minor critiques.

I think your render is slightly too large. Comparing the original with yours, you should be able to tell that Charizard's overall body in yours looks a bit too large in scale to the original.

--

And there's also the subtle amount of noise that are in your renders, which is more clear in the shiny variants. The fact that the toon shading is too smooth on your render has a bit to do with this, but I recommend that you use GIMP to compile your gifs if you aren't already. I've always used that and the gifs that come out have always turned out well without any weird artifact issues that were unrelated to the original render.

--

Alright, one more thing. The positioning of the light source could use some work . Whether this is true or not in your scene, to me it looks like in your front sprite renders the light source is coming directly from the camera, or at least very close to it. Definitely don't want to do that! It makes the renders look a bit more flat that they should. Move the light source up more and move it to the side. Moving it up especially will help your back sprite look not completely in the shade.

--

There's still a few things I'd change, but that's the bulk of what I have to say for now. I'd definitely like to give some animation critiques as well, but I want to focus on getting your render settings right first.

==



I definitely can see where you are coming from with some of these critiques, especially with Umbreon and Gallade, but some of what you said is a bit odd. For example, Absol has always had spiky fur. The model I used was ripped directly from the 3DS games, and I have not modified the model at all in terms of it's mesh/geometry. All I've done is done some reposing and have done my best to mimic the rendering style of the game, but the model itself is from Gamefreak themselves, and unmodified.

The same can be said for Typhlosion's flames you mentioned in a later post. The flame geometry and textures were, again, directly used from the game itself, and is exactly how it would look in-game. Critiquing stuff like that is not really a Critique towards my work, it's more of a critique towards Gamefreak themselves, which obviously doesn't invalidate the critique, but it's not something I can really address. I can't just go changing the design of the Pokemon and deviate from the source material like that. New poses are one thing, changing the source models and textures is another.

But yeah, I think I might address Gallade and Umbreon soon. They were one of my earlier animations from all those years ago, and it doesn't surprise me that Umbreon would feel wobbly (just like my old Gardevoir render), and the awkward posing for Gallade.

Moving the light source more than this made some parts look weird, so I just moved it slightly in the end. But the color feels off when compared to the original. Should I change the materials a bit?

 

[nickdos]

If you had played the actual 3ds games you would see that typhlosion does have fire around its back when it attacks. I suppose people that only play on showdown just have to make do with this cheap attempt at nostalgia pandering to sprites

 

[ZeraX]

These look incredible. Can you please do the Bulbasaur line? especially Venusaur, it looks so retarded in gamefreak games. maybe something like the Venusaur in PBR, Pokedex 3D or Ga-Ole?