Sprite Lamp - Dynamic 3D light for 2D sprites

[O Ilusionista]

Sprite Lamp is a software tool to help game developers combine 2D art with dynamic lighting effects, through the creation of hand drawn normal maps.

I will be launching Sprite Lamp on Kickstarter on November the 13th.

That’s the first day for Australian Kickstarters! I’m also working on getting it live on Steam Greenlight on or before that day. Naturally, there will be links here when that happens.

What makes Sprite Lamp unique is that it creates these maps without ever needing to model anything in 3D – all the inputs can be hand drawn, and Sprite Lamp preserves the art styles that are possible with hand drawn images. As an example, if you were making a pixel art game featuring zombies, here’s how one of those zombies might look if you were using Sprite Lamp:

Sprite Lamp creates various maps from the lighting profiles – a normal map, a depth map, and an ambient occlusion map – and the result looks like this:

Check this amazing tool (WIP) here: http://www.spritelamp.com/

 

[jiam]

interesting 

 

[maxman]

That is so interesting. I would like to use that program for messing around with the sprites. It's going to be nice when it comes to toying with the shading.

 

[DCurrent]

It would also be interesting to break the code down and look at implementing it as a real time effect.

DC

 

[mersox]

Very impressive!

 

[ABK]

Ive seen that effect in some game, it looks kinda ok on single sprite but it doesnt look nice ingame on a couple of sprites tho, looks like bump mapping on sprites not lighting.
Newest rayman also has this but it looks more and more like regular 3d game not like great 2d animation, because there is a border and style to follow so if you overdo it then stuff stops to impress and looks like just 3d not great 2d.
Im not against it but in practice in best case it makes sprites to look like 3d
Check 11:35,  stuff on 16:12 is amazing
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