Transport Tycoon 3D

[Plord]

I am not a pro-3d guy but as i quite like to read how newgrf has been made.

Av8 was made using 3d Render. "dual-company-coloured sprites rendered from accurate 3D models" - Pikka

Nuts, Rawr, yeti were made using 3d render to.

zbase was made using 3d render to.

after they model their creations in 3d they have to "downgrade" to fit in the game.


I know you can make newgrf with paint or gimp but who knows what the future holds. What seems difficult today wouldnt be on the future. May be some day Microsoft will release a windows with 3D Paint.

[Eddi]

there is still a huge difference between 3D models designed for rendering into 2D sprites and 3D models designed for a real-time 3D engine.

[V453000 :)]

Even though I would LOVE to see OpenTTD with same gameplay, but graphics engine in 3D and with some of the ancient unfixable bugs fixed, 3D supporting relatively small NewGRF files without thousands of sprites, I think there are tons of problems on EVERY step of the way.

Gain: Visually awesome, gameplay is the same OR worse (3D games are generally harder to orientate in, have less clear graphics, etc.)
Price: Do almost everything from scratch

As Eddi pointed out, there is a major difference between real time rendering and models created for sprites. E.g. I use TONS of polygons whenever I feel like it, displacement maps almost everywhere, fur and some other special renderer effects which take a lot of processing power to render. Sprites dont mind it in performance.

Related to that, just creating great looking models (because you dont want to go just mediocre if you already put the effort into it, you want something seriously good) takes insane amount of time.

Just to quickly summarize: Thinking about concept/drawing concept art/collecting blueprints, then creating the model, texturing it, creating high-poly model for displacement/normalbump map, baking textures to a low-poly model, eventual rigging, exporting to game engine / in case of sprites setting up infrastructure which creates sprites from renders.
Each of those tasks can take from hours to days.

In total, by all means go for it but yeah

[Arieuitalkmaar]

OpenTT3D would be awesome, but just like the 32bpp vehicles, I think it could be quite cheesy.