Getting Started/Greetings

Heya. Jac Skulls, pleasure to meet y’all!

I’ve been in this line of business for almost… I want to say 10 years now. Kind of weird and makes me feel a bit old, though, I’m only in my 30’s. Lol

I’m also pretty blunt when in work mode. So I hope you kind folks forgive me for this as I don’t think about anything but the point of the topic, usually.

This is my first time trying to learn Godot. I’m using Godot 4.3 Stable Branch currently from Steam. And I have some questions that I couldn’t find via Google so I’m not sure if I’m asking the right questions or not.

  1. If I go the 3D route, does it use Shaders like Cartoon shaders/Anime shaders? If so, where can I achieve this?
  2. What is Godot’s limitations as far as handling 3D models goes?
  3. Is it simple to just use 3D in images for cartoon/anime style? (Already done this bit but ran into a bunch of issues, especially the collision)
  4. Do I need to change to any version of Godot if 4.3 is not the right choice?
    Edit—
  5. Does Godot GAMES support DLC/Addons? (Example being… If I made a bug fix via the code, will the game recognize the addon?)

For the first time in a long while, I plan to make a large project. I understand needing to make smaller projects for first time but this isn’t my first rodeo. Considering Unity, Ren’Py, RPG Maker… Done these with coding. I know more about Python than JS or C#. Completely suck at HTML. Lol

I’m looking to deal in anime style. Any tutorials, words and videos to help get me started will be helpful. Thank you in advance!

(To the staff of Godot, sorry if I posted in the wrong forum)

Hi JacSkulls,

I can’t answer your questions regarding 3D as I’ve never used it. I’ll just say welcome aboard great to have you here.

Kind Regards

Ryn.

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Thanks for the welcome!

You could set most of your materials to use a standard toon shading, or use GLSL to make custom shaders. GodotShaders.com has a few samples of spatial (3D) and canvas (2D) glsl code.

It does a great job, no meshlets yet, but it does automatically generate some aggressive LODs. For your character models, or spindly models it may be a good idea to increase the LOD bias.

What does it mean to use “3D in images”? Like sub viewports?

Version upgrades usually come with good reason to try an upgrade. I think steam will automatically update so be weary and watch Announcements. Make sure you are using a version control system like git if you do want to try upgrading.

Yes, it takes a little foresight but you can add new packs to the exported game via ProjectSettings.load_resource_pack. Such as adding every .pck file found in “user://mods”


Woo! get big! My best advice for new big projects is: do not be afraid to re-write, it will always be faster the second time around and magnitudes better.

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Huh. Didn’t know we could quote. Haha.

Thanks for the shader link! This gives me hope for a more 3D-2D environment. (Plus, beats Blender’s shader Haha)

Will also check out this GLSL and standard materials.

Noted. I’ll look into this. Thank you.

No. Like… When you make a model in Blender or wherever, you render the characters and their animations, creating that RPG feel like what you’d see in RPG Maker. But instead of 2D, it’d be 3D images instead of 3D Objects. (Possibly raising the memory cache higher and performance loss)

Aye. I learned of this in… I think, Reddit. Because of this, I turned off the auto-update thing for it. But this is still iffy, because if Godot remove this version, I’m screwed, as far as steam goes.

Awesome! Always loved this feature thanks to Ren’Py. Glad it’s doable here, too!

Haha. Advice taken!

Thank you so much for your help! Got me three step closer to the goals!

You are correct that pre-rendered models are significantly more expensive these days. We target higher resolutions the memory cost is exponentially increased, that VRam is in short supply. Donkey kong for instance was about 50x50 pixels per frame, at a low frame rate. You will get better and faster results using 3D in-engine; you could spoof the look of these games by using snapped/fixed rotations on your characters.

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That’s what I figured. I was really dreading using 8-directional sprite sheets with 8 FPS (2000 x 4000 pixels per sprite sheet that was eventually going to be a 1000 x 2000 per). Lol.

Thank you, gerkeno, for your advice and help on getting me started. The plan is really a top-down RPG style game. Figured since I already done something similar, it would be easier for me to stay in that territory until I learn more about Godot.

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