Adobe has video tutorials on their website.

There's also lots of helpful stuff built in.


[EDIT]I'm not sure about the original Diablo, but for Diablo II blizzard did all the art-work as 3D models in 3DS Max, which they then rendered using an isometric camera, and then cut-out the renderings into tiles (sprites) with Photoshop. They then gave the tile-sets to their programmers who would write code to stitch them into random levels.

Quote:Original post by biggjoee5790
If the models are all 3d, why would they need to be sprites? couldnt they just be animated?

The final art that is in the game is all 2D. As OremLK said, they pre-rendered all of their 3D models into 2D sprites - so no 3D models actually ship with the game.

At the time, most people either didn't have 3D graphics cards, or had really slow 3D cards. By rendering everything as 2D sprites they could get a lot more detail in the world on the average PC of the time.

Quote:So is it possible to replicate diablo 2 type art in 2d?

Yes, certainly!
They only used 3DS max for their art because they found it easier than drawing pixel-art. But they could have just as easily drawn everything by hand.

Quote:Original post by biggjoee5790
awesome.. so would you say that photoshop CS3 is sufficient to do all kinds of art, especially for video games? Im not a great artist but im decent.. and with practice im sure i can get better. I find my digital art to be alot better than my hardcopy with pencil. I guess thats because all the mods you can apply with photoshop. SO if I created a 2d character for a game, how could i make it appear 3d as in diablo or any other game that uses the technique?

PS CS3, as a no-animation image-editing-program, it lacks no feature. So if there's something it can not do, then you can be pretty convinced there is no other app which can do it. Some special things are easier in some other programs, like making the tools behave like traditional media in Painter, but at the level you say you are now that should not bother you.

As for question 2.... Well let's be realistic... you can't draw sprites which appear 3D without at least some help from a 3D-renderer. You have to have images of it from lots of different angles. Generally you would do the whole thing in 3D. It really is the simplest way to do it, because nobody has the patience to draw so many angles of the same thing over and over. And what if, when you're done, you want to change something? Then you have to manually add it to 100+ images.....

If you don't want to do it all in 3D, then at least render a stick-figure in 3D... animated... and then flesh it out, frame by frame, in Photoshop. If this is realistically possible pretty much depends on the complexity of your art. Do you want to make as pretty things as in Diablo 2? Well then quite frankly you're screwed without 3D. Diablo 2 artwork and models are really high end.

And about learning Photoshop - a tablet is excellent! I suggest you try to find people who have recorded their screen while working. That was a very good learning tool for me. There's some on youtube, but the best ones are on artists own websites.

Quote:SO if I created a 2d character for a game, how could i make it appear 3d as in diablo or any other game that uses the technique?

Generally by applying artistic techniques like Shading, Lighting, Perspectives, etc. A good pixel artist can create 2D images of comparable quality just as easily as a 3D artist can, it more depends on the particular style and medium your going for. You can find some good 2D tutorials at Pixeljoint or DeviantArt, there's also some 2D/3D tutorials around here on gamedev, just check the Tutorials & Downloads sticky in the Visual Arts forum.