Ultima Online-style isometric view. Is it possible?

Erling

I am trying to render sprites in the same style as Ultima Online. It's not the same perspective as most other isometric games. I don't know all of the terms for this but I've found a tutorial on how to render in the same style using Blender, and I was wondering if it is possible to do the same with Daz Studio?
I have already tried in Blender, but it would be a lot of work having to export every single item, so if it is possible to do in Daz Studio, that would require a lot less work.
In the Blender tutorial it says to create a camera with the rotation is changed to 45°, 0°, 45°. If I do this in Daz Studio the camera is pointing upwards, so I am probably already doing something wrong there. I guess it would be fine just using a camera that points to the object, and that has perspective turned off?
The tutorial also says to turn the camera mode to orthograpic, which I have no idea what is, and can't find anywhere in Daz Studio.
It also says that in the render settings there has to be a distortion factor of square root of 2 (1.414) for the x-axis, which also makes zero sense to me.
So is there anyone on here who can help me figure this out? It would be greatly appreciated!
I have attached an image with some of Ultima Online's graphics just so those of you unfamilliar with the game knows what it looks like, and what it is I want to try and replicate.
 

Gordig

It might have to do with Blender's axis system. In DS, rotating on Y rotates the figure around the up axis, so, for example, a human will be spinning around its spine; rotating on Z, the forward axis, would be like skewering a human through the navel and rotating them around that. The same applies to cameras, so I should think you'd want to change the camera rotation to 45, 45, 0. If that doesn't get you the look you're after, try -45, 45, 0. 

Orthographic views are accessible by switching to "front", "right", etc. in the camera selector, or you can simply turn "perspective" in your camera settings off. 

WendyLuvsCatz

DAZ studio does not do a true orthographic view, Carrara can with it's isometric camera as can software games like Flowscape, it's something they could add as a future feature in my opinion.

You can get near unchecking perspective though

Kainjy

Orthographic is when the perspective effect is off (in a perspective view, parallel lines go in a point, while orthographic they remain parallel). The distortion factor should be the lens distortion (i'm not sure..). You can use a camera (at 45-45 degrees) with perspective and lens effects off, or you can use top/front wiev and rotate objects of 45 degrees

Erling

Thank you all for the feedback!

With the camera set to -45, 45, 0. and perspective turned off, I get something close to what I want, but it's still not there.
Now I just need to figure out the lens distortion. I've never tried using that, so I guess it's trial and error from here.

I've attached an image of what I have gotten so far, and as you can see, it's not there yet. Hopefully the lens distortion will fix that.

PVGames

I know this is pretty far after you posted, but I only just now saw this.

You CAN get super close to the Ultima Online 1:1 military projection perspective. It took me a lot of time and screwing around to figure it out. 

 

The trick is to not have the camera at a 45 degree angle on the X axis. You actually want it closer to 90 degrees, but obviously it can't be 90 degrees otherwise it would be perfectly top-down. The sweet spot for me, I found, was setting the camera to -78.0 on the X axis (and 45 on the Y axis, Z axis is untouched). 

Now, when you have an item loaded into your scene, you might notice it looks weird... squashed even, at this angle. This is the trick that I discovered - increase the Y-scale of the item by 300-400% (and leave the other axis alone). Viola, you now have UO's perspective. Some examples of assets I have made using this technique:

 

Good luck and hopefully this helps you out!

wsterdan

I don't know if the original poster will still be able to use your info, but I sure appreciate it. It does look like you're pretty much nailed it.

-- Walt Sterdan

Dartanbeck

Agreed! Kudos!

Erling

PVGames said:

I know this is pretty far after you posted, but I only just now saw this.

You CAN get super close to the Ultima Online 1:1 military projection perspective. It took me a lot of time and screwing around to figure it out. 

 

The trick is to not have the camera at a 45 degree angle on the X axis. You actually want it closer to 90 degrees, but obviously it can't be 90 degrees otherwise it would be perfectly top-down. The sweet spot for me, I found, was setting the camera to -78.0 on the X axis (and 45 on the Y axis, Z axis is untouched). 

Now, when you have an item loaded into your scene, you might notice it looks weird... squashed even, at this angle. This is the trick that I discovered - increase the Y-scale of the item by 300-400% (and leave the other axis alone). Viola, you now have UO's perspective. Some examples of assets I have made using this technique:

Good luck and hopefully this helps you out!

Oh, wow, this is really strange as I have been wanting to ask you about this, but I forgot your username. We chatted once years ago on another forum, but that was before I really tried any of this.
So thank you very much for this info! I will test it out and see how it works. I have been trying to render in Blender, but the quality isn't as good. Now the question is how you managed to get everything to look like UO's graphic style? And are you rendering the items individually?
And I know I'm very late with this reply. Honestly, I had forgotten about it as I was already rendering things in Blender and had given up on trying with Daz Studio. So I hope you see this message soon!

mfadlyasrockz77extreme4

PVGames said:

I know this is pretty far after you posted, but I only just now saw this.

You CAN get super close to the Ultima Online 1:1 military projection perspective. It took me a lot of time and screwing around to figure it out. 

 

The trick is to not have the camera at a 45 degree angle on the X axis. You actually want it closer to 90 degrees, but obviously it can't be 90 degrees otherwise it would be perfectly top-down. The sweet spot for me, I found, was setting the camera to -78.0 on the X axis (and 45 on the Y axis, Z axis is untouched). 

Now, when you have an item loaded into your scene, you might notice it looks weird... squashed even, at this angle. This is the trick that I discovered - increase the Y-scale of the item by 300-400% (and leave the other axis alone). Viola, you now have UO's perspective. Some examples of assets I have made using this technique:

 

Good luck and hopefully this helps you out!

The environment and figures, is this from daz?? or you made from some kind image editor software??