I had an artist make a character model for me. The size is fine. It is going to be used for a turn based fantasy strategy game played on a 2D isometric map.

The price was very reasonable and I need lots of such models for the game. They do NOT need to be customized. What you see is what you get for the player. I will likely be displaying it a smaller pixel size than the model given.

Here is the problem:

I don't program or know anything about what I need yet. But I don't want to lose the artist...and want him continuing his work until I get a programmer (which will be in the future).

I'm not sure the language/platform. What I want to do is have the game made using a 3D engine but put on 2D maps and be a 2D game. I'm not even sure rotating the character models is necessary. But I would like to know if it would work with this particular model.

I am attaching the files received from the artist. There are no animations yet. Can someone take a look? If this is something I need to pay for I can do that.

I want to know if I need anything else? IF the quality/resolution is ok? What is the general impression of the quality...consideration the game is not supposed to be high end at all. Its supposed to look nice though and have cool units on the battlefield (20 or more at a time).

Am I limited at all in how I can use this model?

Also, I am just getting the model. No animations. When I do decide on the animations to use should the artist be doing this OR the coder? OR both? Can I use this model to program an animation?

Anyway, any help would be appreciated.

From the looks of the screenshot that model should be fairly easy to rig and animate, (Rigging and animating is usually done by the artists (or dedicated animators), for big projects it is common to use motion capture to get high quality animations with less effort, IIRC there was some US university that put out a whole bunch of motion capture data under a permissive license recently that you can use for free (even commercially) so you might want to look for that to see if its something you can use), the programmer (or more commonly these days, the engine) should ensure that transitions between animations are handled correctly and preferably smoothly.

Edit: Here you go.
http://mocap.cs.cmu.edu/

They got some swordplay capture in the sports/martial arts section that might be of use to you. + a whole bunch of other stuff.

I havn't checked the quality, it is likely that you still have to do some manual tweaks and add a bit to it but it could still save you tons of time.

Thanks. So if I am looking for a programmer am I limited by any languages or anything else based on this model and my desire for a 2D isometric game?

And I have all the files I need?

Thanks. So if I am looking for a programmer am I limited by any languages or anything else based on this model and my desire for a 2D isometric game?

For a 2D isometric game the model won't matter that much as you'll animate and render it to a spritesheet using a 3d tool such as blender, maya, 3dsmax, etc.

Languagewise the programmer can use whatever language he/she is comfortable with as long as it works with your target platform, (For PC any mainstream language will work just fine)

as for what files you need, i have no idea, its your game. you should have all the files you need to get that model animated atleast. (Allthough you probably have to rig it)

The only problem i see is that you got the model as a .max file, (This is the proprietary format for 3dsmax which really is a bit of a problem, 3dsmax is extremely expensive ($3500 per copy) if you're going to use it commercially (If you're a student you can get it for free but you're not allowed to use the student version commercially) so it is probably a good idea if your artist exports the models to an interchange format such as fbx (Which you can then import into a cheaper application to do the rigging and animating) or do the animating and rendering for you aswell.

Thank you again. So the "rigging" is not included in the files? Sorry, for the stupid questions. It is supposed to be included but I cannot see anyting related to that.

Thank you again. So the "rigging" is not included in the files? Sorry, for the stupid questions. It is supposed to be included but I cannot see anyting related to that.

I don't know, i don't own a 3dsmax license so i can't actually open the file, as i said, its a really expensive piece of software, there should be some artists on these boards with student licenses though who can check the files for you.