Possible to make 2d look 3d?

[Gamemakingdude]

Hi, i am planning to have an slender man in my next custom story but i have no modelling experience what so ever, so i am thinking is it possible to have a 2d model that looks 3d. or i could use shadows but i dont know if it will have the same effect.

[xtron]

I'm not a good modeller nor texture artist but what I can say is that if you add shadows and some lights it will make a almost perfect 3d illusion.
If you enter the material editor and load a texture you'll see stuff like alpha etc if you disable all of 'em and then enable them one by one slowly you'll see light/shadow difference that will give it an awesome 3d feeling.
And, goodluck

[Gamemakingdude]

I dont understand?

[xtron]

You can't make a modell look 3d because it'll always stay 2d but what you can do is make a texture that gives the illusion that it's 3d with adding shadows and lights.

[Your Computer]

I'd say do research on tangent-space normals mapping, but that doesn't seem to be what you're looking for.

[Gamemakingdude]

Anything with maths is out of the question!

[GraphicsKid]

If it's far away enough, a flat plane with a cutout of a person can look real. They did this in Dead Space 2 at the end where there's hundreds of thousands of those creatures in the distance, they're just animated textures on flat planes.

[Acies]

hmm. Some thoughts I have around it:
1. A gobo can have movement of any sorts, but it's really only a light cast on a surface.
2. A height map will create a 3d illusion on a 2d object. Height maps are used on most of the default tilesets.
3. Animating textures are limited as I understand it. You may only move them in X or Y. But that could perhaps be combined with some clever scripting.
4. I'm unsure of the possibilities of setting a plane as an enemy. If it was possible to somehow combine it with the animation of textures that would be really cool. Like doom 1 & 2.

[Gamemakingdude]

Im not sure about using gobos, not sure how to use the hieghtmap, i think i can try the 4th method but i am not good at 2d animation but i think i can try that. not sure what you mean by the 3rd.

[Khyrpa]

I tested things for a little while and the only way I think it would be possible to create animated monster like in doom would be to create the silhouette of the monster (plane) and use gobo animated lights to create the animation. This way the monster will look 2d because it wont turn to the players way like billboards.

Better way would be to create billboard's from the animation sprites of the monster and use connected lights to set them off and on at the right time, but to my knowledge you can't control the timing of flicker inside model editor...