Isometric look - can be freely rotated

[Wampus]

This is extremely cool! Well done, Wampus.

How did you get the idea to do this?

Well, its very nerdy, so be warned. I was out on a short walk and got to thinking about affine texture mapping problems. I mused that isometric texture mapping wouldn't have the problems that 3D texture mapping has without perspective correction. I realised it would also be possible to calculate perspective correction for all blocks and other objects in an isometric scene with a few trig functions. A kind of z-buffering for isometric view could be taken care of by separating render order into quadrants determined by the angle of rotation. When I got home I scribbled some notes, created a rotating block then created the example I posted here.

I was going to leave it at that since 3D hardware is so powerful nowadays. Why would anyone bother with isometric? Now I'm thinking 1) It has retro appeal and 2) It has a charm of its own. So, I will probably use it to make some kind of game soon.

Oh, and r0ber7 I have no idea what you mean. Everything I do is totally original.  Seriously though, I will be creating a new bigger scene myself today with my own textures. It would look nice on YouTube.

[erico]

I would not call that nerdy, but a "professional technical/scientific take on a know set of problem".
Heck, Wampus, such a thing as a MFa or Msc or even PHD on the subject holds enough power.
Congratulations, it is wonderful to see the base and reasons for striving for a solution!

[theprotocol]

This is extremely cool! Well done, Wampus.

How did you get the idea to do this?

Well, its very nerdy, so be warned. I was out on a short walk and got to thinking about affine texture mapping problems. I mused that isometric texture mapping wouldn't have the problems that 3D texture mapping has without perspective correction. I realised it would also be possible to calculate perspective correction for all blocks and other objects in an isometric scene with a few trig functions. A kind of z-buffering for isometric view could be taken care of by separating render order into quadrants determined by the angle of rotation. When I got home I scribbled some notes, created a rotating block then created the example I posted here.

I was going to leave it at that since 3D hardware is so powerful nowadays. Why would anyone bother with isometric? Now I'm thinking 1) It has retro appeal and 2) It has a charm of its own. So, I will probably use it to make some kind of game soon.

Oh, and r0ber7 I have no idea what you mean. Everything I do is totally original.  Seriously though, I will be creating a new bigger scene myself today with my own textures. It would look nice on YouTube.

Great! I always love hearing stories about things like this.

It may be nerdy but I wish I was that knowledgeable. The way they taught us programming in college was very "light" and there was more of an emphasis on high level concepts, so I'm fascinated by stuff like this (Incidentally, I'm trying to learn more and more low-level stuff nowadays).

[cruelcynic]

That is awesome. How does it look with character sprites on it? That would make for a great shining force game.

[Wampus]

That is awesome. How does it look with character sprites on it? That would make for a great shining force game.

It looks good enough. Nicer with drop shadows underneath, which are kind of important for sense of depth and height.

[erico]

I wondered on the sprite thing too, like on the FF tatics, sprites are not 3d but have the usual 4 positions (more like 2 + 2 flipped).
The whole light direction could make it strange, but having sprites on the ´Top to down´ style does an ok job on FF tatics.
Same could be done here, but I guess we could do even better

[Wampus]

8 directions would look a lot nicer. I've only experimented with X_SPRITE style billboarding so far.

[erico]

This kind of game here could also take advantage of the engine

http://theinstructionlimit.com/diluvium-tojam-7

[Hatonastick]

Wow.. I'm impressed.  That runs extremely smoothly and looks good as well!  I hope you are going to expand that a bit more.

Without giving us your source, I'd like to see a tutorial that explains how you went about this.  Haven't done my own 3D calculations since my Atari ST days.  Can't even remember how to go about it anymore...

[erico]

code + notes is here:
http://www.glbasic.com/forum/index.php?topic=8152.0

[Hatonastick]

Awesome, thanks!  BTW I noticed you mentioned Voxels in that topic.  Voxels is what I was thinking of too for some reason.  I'd love to write a voxel engine one day.

Edit:  You've done some prodding of my mind today with your posts.  I'm also currently looking up/trying to research Ambient Occular shaders because of something you said in another thread.  For some procedurally generated non-textured 3D for a game I'm working on.