Art Rendered sprites 4.0

Finally an update to this project!
I know I have not updated this in a very long time, but it has mostly been because I have been much more focused on creating animations. You are always welcome to check out my Discord server where I and others post our work. It is mostly art, but there are also a few other thing there such as scripts etc.
The link is in my signature and on my profile.

Anyway, this project seems to be a never-ending trial of making new versions with new settings, and I can already tell you that it is not over with that yet. Once again, I have changed the way I render the sprites, and also gone back to the Cycles render engine. Before I mostly used the Eevee engine, but to be able to fully get the benefits of an Nvidia GPU you apparently have to use Cycles. And I can see the difference.
I also changed my lighting setup, and that is actually what is causing me to not be completely done yet.
An example you can see here on this cart:

As you can see, on the first render, the light is pretty strong. I will try to reduce that, because on some items it just wipes out the details. And I do prefer the more harsh shadows on the rest.

Another thing with this new setup is that now I can actually render smaller objects that doesn't just look like blurry blobs with no detail, or too pixelated.
And what I think is the greatest improvement is the fact that these renders does not produce jagged edges or transparencies in the objects when you import them into Fiddler.
After the renders I do run some Photoshop actions to make the renders a bit more Fiddler friendly, and improve the details a bit. I run a removal of all 100% black and 100% white in the images, and after that I apply an unsharp mask filter. That does bring out the details a bit more.

And just to show you how far I have progressed over the years, here is a bit of a preview of the first versions up to now:

Although some of these are not too bad looking, they all share one thing: they get jagged edges and/or transparent pixels when imported to Fiddler.


For now there are nothing for you to download and test as I am still trying to fix that over-exposed front light. I will post an update whenever I have something for you!

I know I haven't updated this in over a year, but it has been because I just never felt that the renders was as I wanted them to be. Also, when I was working on version 3, I encountered a lot of the black outlines that just didn't look good, and the only way I could remove them was manually, and that was just too much work.
Since then I have changed the workflow a bit. I added the 'freestyle' option in Blender which gives the renders a small outline to most of the edges. I also changed the render size to 400% and then scaled them down, which somehow made the renders look better. If you saw the orc encampment I uploaded recently, you can see that there is a difference between those and the older ones I posted. The new ones in this version are made the same way.
I know that there are not as many as I used to post, but I will have to upload the sprites in smaller portions or I will end up getting overwhelmed! So instead I will release new updates to version 4 and add them to the download folder, and also have one big, compressed file with all of the renders in them along with the smaller updates, so that people that has not downloaded any of the files yet won't have to download all of the updates too.

To download these, just click on the download button which will take you to a Mega folder containing the files - along with the older versions if anyone still wants to use those.

There are two different files for each of the sets; one containing finished BMP files ready for Fiddler, and one with the unedited PNG files. You can do with them as you wish, and the only thing I would like is that you let me know if you end up using any of them on your shard. I would love to see them 'in action'.

And if you are wondering why I skipped from version 2 to version 4 it is because I actually already did version 3, but just never uploaded it, as it was the one with all of the bad outlines on.

This update adds over 600 new sprites. In this version you will find both medieval and modern/sci-fi themed renders. For now, the sprites are still divided into several archives, but I am working on sorting them, and once I am done, the newer versions will include the old sprites as well. I already ran a script to remove all 100% white and all 100% black from the older sprites, so once I'm done with the sorting, I will release those as well.
As I've done with the other versions from 2.0 and 2.1, this time there is also a RAR file with all of the renders in PNG format, with transparent backgrounds. In that archive there are also a few large renders of things that wouldn't fit in the TOP program. Feel free to do with those as you wish.
The file also includes a few renders using models from Dragon Age: Inquisition. I mostly did those just to test how they would work. After I'm done with all of the Daz Studio renders, I do plan on starting creating sprites from models from several games. These include The Sims 4, The Elder Scrolls VI: Skyrim, Dragon Age: Inquisition, World of Warcraft, and perhaps Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4.
I do have several other games that I might start exporting models from, but the ones I have tested doesn't have any model exporter programs, so the process might be a bit more difficult.
I did try exporting assets from Granado Espada, which has some beautiful graphics, even though it's an older game. Unfortunately you need a paid version of a program to be able to successfully do the exporting. It might be something I will look into at a later time. For now my focus is still finishing the models from Daz Studio.
After I'm done with all of this, there is even the possibility that I will start looking around the internet for free 3D models, as they are quite easy to import into Blender, if they come with textures. But that's all for the future.
I hope you enjoy this version. And as always, please let me know if you use any of my art on your shard. I'd love to check it out!

Edit:
Just to clarify, all of my sprites has at least two angles - some four or more. To see a full preview of all of the sprites from version 2 and up take a look here. In order to see the full size of the image, you will have to download it.

I'm finally ready to release a new version of the rendered sprites.
The project is getting so large that from now on I will have to link to a Mega folder. If this causes you any issues, please let me know!
These haven't all been tested inside the game, but I did run a batch script to remove all 100% black pixels on the sprites. So unless there are any 100% white pixels, they should be good.
As something new, I have also included all of the renders as transparent PNG files, if people would like to edit or scale them, or do with them whatever they want really. I don't mind.
Besides that, there are some large ships that I rendered, but they are too large to be used as is, so if they can be of any use to anyone, you are free to do with them what you wish.
I also included the previous version of the renders in this, as I haven't gotten to sorting and renaming the files yet. My plan is that eventually I will sort all of the sprites into categories for easier access.
And as I changed the lighting on my Blender file somewhere along the way, there are some renders that needs to be changed. It's mostly things like paintings, where one is way darker than the other. I will try to fix that!
Also, as a test, I have tried exporting some meshes from The Sims 4 and rendered them as sprites, just to see how well they would fit UO. I don't think they are too bad. Some are a bit too bright, but overall I think they fit the game. This means that whenever I finish this project, I will be able to render hundreds of new sprites using meshes from The Sims 4. This also opens up for lots of modern things, if that's what you're into.

Anyway, here are what's included in this version:

And the ships:

I've been working hard on the next version, and as of now I have 785 sprites sitting in my render folder waiting to be processed.
Here is a preview of some of the new sprites:

I am not sure when I will release the next version, as I really want to finish rendering the models I already exported - which are quite a few. We will see.

I'm finally ready to release a new version of these! This time all of the sprites are rendered in the new and improved way, and I must say I really think they look better. You may recognise some of the sprites from my older uploads, and I'm sure you can tell the difference.
This first version with the new rendering style is mostly a futuristic/sci-fi/steampunk themed one, but I will continue with more medieval/RPG-style after this version.
And I want to give a huge thanks to Fink on here, who was kind enough to create a tool that I can use when I turn the rendered PNG files into BMP files for Fiddler.
The tool is located here.
Some of these sprites are rather large, and will mostly only fit places where there are no floors above them. They would probably also needed to be sliced into multi tile objects, but I haven't gotten around to figuring out how to do that yet, so for now I am just posting every sprite regardless of their size.

Just a few more of the sprites I've started rendering. I noticed early on (but not before posting the previous image) that I had forgotten to change the camera mode, so the first ones had some wrong proportions. This is fixed now, and I will remember it for the next ones!

I know I've been silent with this project for a very long time, and one of the reasons is that I've been trying to figure out how to change the style of the renders, as I wasn't really happy with the way most of the sprites looked. They were sort of lacking details.
The way I used to do the whole process was that I exported the scene with the object from Daz Studio to Blender as a DAE file, and then importing that into Blender. For some reason some of the texture details got lost. I have a Daz Studio to Blender export script that I never really used, and I got to think that maybe that way was better. And I must say the results were very much an improvement!
This means that I will most likely be starting the whole project over and rendering every sprite again. So I will have a lot of work ahead of me. I will keep the old sprites up, and some will stay the way they were, but I will try to re-render as many of the old ones as I can, and also adding more new ones, as I still have hundreds of objects that I haven't even started rendering.
I also hope this new way of rendering will prevent too many black pixels that I have to remove manually from each sprite. I haven't tested them yet, so I really don't know.
Just to show how the new renders looks compared to the old ones, here is a few images:

After a summer break, I have once again been working on this project.
Added over 380 new sprites to the archive.

New in version 1.5:

And once again, if you use these sprites on your shard, please let me know so I can go check them out. One shard has already used a few of them, and I didn't know until I discovered them myself!

New in this version:

• Over 200 new sprites added
• Several partial hued sprites added - along with hued versions
• Fixed a few of the previous sprites
• Updated the project description

Updated to version 1.3.
In this version there are 73 new sprites, and the previous ones that had transparent pixels has been fixed. And I know that some of these sprites are too large to be used as single items, but I haven't sliced them up yet. I will do that later on.

I've updated the archive and added 34 new sprites.