2D Characters in 3D World - Unity Directional Billboarding Tutorial

[@karlgamedevdesign]

I must say, after watching many, many Unity Tutorials, you are THE BEST TUTOR, I have ever come across. Your content is well prepared and you explain stuff better than any high school teacher, university lecturer or KZbinr has ever done! Awesome!! Thanks 👍🤘

[@PaperMouseGames]

Wow, such kind words, thank you so much 🥳

[@JustGabe]

THANK YOU! This tutorial was exactly what I was looking for for my isometric tactical game and your approach worked wonders! THANK YOU!

[@mrpro877]

thanks a lot for this man! I was looking for a tutorial like this for ages! really helped me out!

[@brewmeistah]

I really love this kind of style. And can you have multiplayer mode in this kind of setup? Like an open world

[@spounka]

since this uses a Local camera instead of a global one, and the sprites are played locally by player and not streamed from a server, you can assume this would work

[@styxrakash4639]

Definitely

[@cosmiclulu9001]

These tutorials are exactly what I've been trying to do!! I appreciate the time and effort you put into making this. If you plan on making more tutorials, can you explain how to get the directional billboarding to work with the player/third person camera? Thank you! I look forward to seeing the development of Amber Roots!

[@alpha1471]

Would love to see more complex uses of billboard layering to show more interesting effects and ways to add depth.

[@tickmagnet7155]

The LateUpdate change was a life saver for my project! Thanks!

[@DrDrasticVR]

ive never thought id go from being a fan of ur game to using a tutorial u made wow

[@vlakitus]

Great tutorial! Thank you so much for sharing with us! Would like to ask you how you made the sprites being affected by the 3D light and post processing effects? Also, are you using URP in Unity? Thanks again, man 👏🏼

[@hariyantohariyanto501]

me also,,, pretty please,,,

[@PaperMouseGames]

Yeah this is with URP, and I'm using a custom shader for the sprites, maybe I'll make a video on that as well.

[@vlakitus]

@@PaperMouseGames thanks for your answer! Would be great a video about your custom shader, btw your game looks beautiful already, o love pixel art

[@4per8]

bro i searched for a tutorial on this exact thing so many times and the day before i cant code for a week or so because of plumbing it just popps into my recomended

[@joaopedroziliottomartinez3399]

Amazing Video! Helped me a lot, Thank you!

[@kylewelfare8362]

Great video, super helpful for a project I'm just starting! How did you manage to keep your character pixel perfect despite the use of a Perspective camera? Having a lot of issues with nasty aliasing on my sprites in the Game View

[@АнастасияМаксимова-с5ш]

if you're still running your channel, make a video about how you created grass movement and shadow casting from 2d sprites in 3d space I really like your project😍

[@Alex98776]

A question In which template should I make these types of games in 3d or 3d (URP)

[@Somno_toska]

Good lord thank you for these tutorials you're a lifesaver! no idea why finding info about these techniques is so scarce... I mean this in excitement and not to rush you, but when do you think you'll release the tutorial on how to make the player character itself ? Thanks again regardless !!!

[@Kyt2024]

This is awesome! Thank you very much. I’m kinda stuck right now in the position of being super uncertain if I want to leave my game 2d or convert it to a billboarded style. If you don’t mind me asking, do you find pathfinding any more or less difficult now that you’ve made the switch? As for video ideas, I’d love to see how your workflow for creating and adding the 3d models of your scenes works (I’d be equally interested in scene environment)

[@PaperMouseGames]

Thanks! I highly recommend looking into A* pathfinding. There is an asset for unity called A* Pathfinding Project that has a very robust free version and it works in both 2D and 3D. With it, the transition was super easy in terms of pathfinding.

[@AnnaGlin]

I was expecting this to be about the actual player character as that is what the title suggests. could you show how you did that? did you use a blend tree for that as well? the blend tree is so confusing to me but probably good to use it😅

[@trashtiercontent6231]

Heyo what's been going on I might be missing one but I haven't seen ya post for a month just wanted to say keep up with this stuff you've been an inspiration to me to continue learning game dev I love your videos and I'm excited to see what else you do

[@danielm878]

Looks incredible Keep on Keeping on!

[@Mortadelka2010]

My man some updates? That's really cool!!

[@thederbly6009]

How do you put the animation and movement for the player?

[@MashTayto]

Could you show a screenshot of what your character movement script looks like? Also do you think this system would work with Cinemachine or would there be conflicts? Thanks man!

[@PaperMouseGames]

I'm just using the Unity Third person controller asset for movement, and I'm using Cinemachine, no problems with it!

[@frizzlefry176]

What would you call the style of like Minekos night market and Wytchwood? Are there any tutorials on that specific style??

[@PaperMouseGames]

I haven't played those games, but from the trailers it certainly looks like sprite billboarding, the key difference between my example and those games being that they use a fixed camera angle. So a sort of top-down sprite billboard. At least that's how it appears to me. Hope this was helpful 😀

[@kazvtuber]

is there any chance we could get a download for this sample project? is it available on ur patreon for example? thanks for the tut!

[@ABATHINGAPEX]

im not sure why but unity didnt create a animator controller for me

[@zeku45]

Would it be possible to implement inverse kinematics and procedural animation in this style? I'm struggling to find any examples of a billboarded doom/proteus/daggerfall style game or demo with procedural animation.

[@grunnindieps1-stylesurviva200]

Learned a lot from you, thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge. Subscribed and will check out more of your content :)

[@Flamolino]

This helped me a lot, thanks! But as the characters move, how would I go about changing the direction he's looking based on his movement?

[@PaperMouseGames]

Might do a character tutorial next, seems multiple people have questions about that!

[@vikramthewrench]

@@PaperMouseGames I want that tutorial badly

[@CalibanDev]

@@PaperMouseGames COuld you please make that tutorial?

[@RobbyDev-x1n]

I tried it but it only worked without the billboarding script itself, just the directional animation code, but when I put the billboarding script it stops working, what do I do?

[@treymtz]

That's neat but I can't STAND those shadows moving with the sprite. I think that alone might deter me from ever using billboarding unless I planned on no real shadows. Im not sure baking them and making them static helps, cuz then you have a shadow not matching the sprite.

[@megupets]

Could you make a tutorial on how to make that little monster walk around randomly or anything like that?

[@SRWG9001]

I echo that I'd love to see some stuff about character animation. I also get some really weird warping and wiggling whenever the camera moves, and I don't know why. It's sad, I love the overall effect, but don't understand what causes the wiggling

[@thelegendarymushroom80]

Hey there! it is really hard to find any billboarding tutorials :( can you maybe make a tutorial series about billboarding? Like how did you set up the player? I only worked on 3D in unity and this only for about a month, I have no idea how the 2D stuff works :) i am also interested in how you did the shader :D

[@PaperMouseGames]

Thanks for the suggestions! I'll keep them in mind 😀

[@thelegendarymushroom80]

@@PaperMouseGames this is amazing! I did not thought you would reply this fast! Most people don't answer comments in their tutorial videos! Thank you so much!

[@WinstonWilliamsofficial]

Is it possible to have a top down sprite and 3/4 view/ isometric sprites as well???

[@chucks9503]

Hey PaperMouse I would love if you could change elevation. The most specific example being climbing up a hill.

[@TheGameLecturer]

I want to know about the sprite shader you use

[@divyanshsh]

thanks

[@dunkeysss4716]

how come your sprites doesnt overlay with each other ;;;

[@jessek3721]

I've got a question. First though I love this tutorial and thank you for this. My question is that i'm making a Disgaea style game and each unit is in it's own grid cell, using this style of sprite's in a 3D world how might I go about making it look like when the unit is attack another unit in an adjacent cell, making it look like the weapon is actually connecting with the enemy. At the moment my character kind of just swings his weapon and it doesn't really connect or look like he's hitting anything. Is this just something i'll have to work on my sprites to get functioning or does anyone have any idea with code how i might achieve this look.

[@PerfectRythme]

you think this would work with a multiplayer game? or ya think itd cause issues with how other players see your sprite?

[@felizen]

It could, the other players would just see your sprite from another angle.

[@Ashley-xb1dz]

As long as each player has their own camera it should work fine.

[@dmckone]

Cool, man!!!!!! Keep going))))

[@Foxaite]

can you have it in the first person as well?

[@OhBoy3DTime]

Hey! How do u get this tipe of shading on unity?

[@strategystuff5080]

very nice

[@dejay4568]

Can someone help me with how you did the grass as shown in your other videos? I know you can get that effect by putting 2 quads together but how do you get the textures to be on the other side? Because when you create a plane in unity the back of it is transparent?

[@lucaknoop8222]

Heyo, how does it work when I have some walking animations and want to display it? Maybe in combination with some wander AI? In my project I implemented the function you shown in this video + some Wander AI. But I don't know how to implement the Walking animations

[@PaperMouseGames]

You would need more motions in the blend tree and a speed variable. Then when you check the angle of the sprite you would also check the speed and play either the appropriate idle or walking animation. I think that should work, it's been a while since I used Unity's default animation system in my own stuff 😅

[@david55200]

it's just what i need for create my dungeon crawler like dungeon master. I wanna to keep hand for draw items and monster. I don't want to do it in 3D.

[@TheLotroNerd]

Keep posting

[@anthonywallace5081]

Awesome content. Any chance you can do a video on character animation and set up ? Trying to do something similiar in my project and my 2D character does not look 3D haha just a flat surface looking around and then my character is just a line when going left or right 😂😂

[@PaperMouseGames]

I'll likely do a character tutorial next since you're not the first to ask about setting up the character😀

[@thelegendarymushroom80]

I watched the first video and added the second video code to what I had due to the first video, now my trees won't move anymore and my npc still doesn't work :(

[@PaperMouseGames]

Hmm sounds like something got messed up along the way, not 100% sure without more info, maybe drop by the Discord and we can troubleshoot with more people?

[@thelegendarymushroom80]

@@PaperMouseGames thank you I will! I just have to ask the question again, maybe tmrw, it is getting really late atm! :D

[@question_mark]

how's things going bro ?

[@david55200]

for 4 sides animations : using UnityEngine; public class SpriteDirectionalController : MonoBehaviour { [SerializeField] Animator animator; [SerializeField] Transform mainTransform; [SerializeField] SpriteRenderer spriteRenderer; [SerializeField] Camera customCamera; private void LateUpdate() { if (customCamera == null) { Debug.LogError("Veuillez assigner la caméra dans l'inspector."); return; } Vector3 camForwardVector = new Vector3(customCamera.transform.forward.x, 0f, customCamera.transform.forward.z); // Calcul de l'angle entre la direction de la caméra et le vecteur "vers l'avant" de l'objet float signedAngle = Vector3.SignedAngle(camForwardVector, mainTransform.forward, Vector3.up); Vector2 animationDirection = Vector2.zero; if (signedAngle >= -45f && signedAngle < 45f) { // Vue de face animationDirection = new Vector2(0f, -1f); } else if (signedAngle >= 45f && signedAngle < 135f) { // Vue de gauche animationDirection = new Vector2(1f, 0f); } else if ((signedAngle >= 135f && signedAngle = -180f && signedAngle < -135f)) { // Vue de dos animationDirection = new Vector2(0f, 1f); } else if (signedAngle >= -135f && signedAngle < -45f) { // Vue de droite animationDirection = new Vector2(-1f, 0f); } // Appliquer la direction d'animation animator.SetFloat("moveX", animationDirection.x); animator.SetFloat("moveY", animationDirection.y); } }

[@CreticDev]

Life saver

[@lucaknoop8222]

I was looking for a tutorial for so long... Like if you read my dm on Instagram and uploaded the video a couple days later. Keep up the good work buddy 🥰

[@PaperMouseGames]

Pure coincidence! I feel silly, because before this comment I didn't even know Instagram had a messaging system😅

[@lucaknoop8222]

@@PaperMouseGames damn haha 🤣🤣