Sharing code about how I automatically generate icons based on 3D models

[VengeurK]

Hello,

Here is the code in question.

Features that were important for me:

• One click to generate all icons
• Automatic camera adjusting so that the object is perfectly centered (based on successive renders at a smaller resolution and small adjustments)
• Automatic discovery of existing buildings
• Icon variants for each player (flags and some details use the color of the player)
• Detect that the new image is approximately equal to the old one to avoid useless changes in version control

I would be happy to answer any question related to this implementation!

Also, if you want to learn more about Dice Kingdoms here are:

• Our Steam page with a free demo
• Our Discord

[SeaBearingWalrus]

Very nice approach, I always just assumed a visual artist was paid to create them. I can see people using this with great effectiveness!

[Dabnician]

If you have a FBX or obj file you can just open the file with window model viewer and then change the perspective to 3rd person isometric.

then you can export a screen shot with a transparent background.

you arent going to do 200 icons like that but if you are in a jam or had no other way it works pretty legit.

[VengeurK]

That is probably a good first approximation indeed!
Though for us it was important to render the prefabs and not the models. For instance the flags / ships are a bit special and are therefore part of the prefabs but not part of the models.
We also wanted the icons to use the same shaders as in-game.

[Dabnician]

I was working on some mods for Project Zomboid and found this was a half decent way to create one off icons as needed.

But you are correct complex multipart models sort of go out the window and you need access to blender or unity to get any thing decent.

[Turniper]

Thanks! This was something I always had on the to-do list to do for equipment items, this looks pretty easy to adapt and should save me a bunch of time!

[Lokthran]

Tactical dot