3D artist needs help

Yello, my first post!

Right, on to my problem: I am an experienced 3D modeller, and I use 3DS Max to do that stuff. I've been planning on this sort of top-down adventure game, but my problem is in making it's graphics. I can model stuff and render it, but there's alot of questions that I'd like answers because I couldn't find much tutorials about actually making levels.

1. What would be the most performance-friendly way to use alot of seperate images? Sprite, Tiled Background etc?

2. Is there an effect to make drop shadows for static sprites, such as houses, fences, trees etc?

3. Are large sprite objects problematic to render? I'm planning on using big sprites that would include a building, ground around it and some small details. This way many areas could look more unique and interesting, rather than recycling same sprites in all places.

Thanks in advance. Scirra for life, darnation!

if it's going to repeat the same texture over and over, tiled background is better than sprite

you can make a tiledbackground take up 100,000 with no slowdown

but 100,000 sprites, well. that's another story

huge sprites don't seem to be much of a problem, in my current cap I have only 30 unique sprites so far, but many of them are larger than 1024x768, and I'm having no slowdown problems yet

as far as drop shadows, if you can, and you're not planning to have changing light sources, I would render the shadows into part of the sprite in 3dmax. I can't think of any really flexible shadows built into construct

Hey, thanks for answering. That cleared my problems nicely

Also, I forgot to ask this.. How would I make a wall that player could go behind and in front? I mean, if the wall is 'higher' than player, the player would get 'under' it, even if he/she is perspective-vice in front of it? I hope that made any sense.. English ain't my main language. Finnsman here

all objects in a family

loop through them ordered by y position

make sure the hotspots are set up where the object touches the ground

and setup the collision masks at the ground as well

quick example:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1013446/treetest.cap

if any of that doesn't make sense

I would recommend trying the ghost shooter tutorial and maybe the platform school tutorial before moving on

I tried with 600 objects, it works - but flickers when you move.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1024727/600.cap

I tried with 600 objects, it works - but flickers when you move.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1024727/600.cap

that's because some of the objects are at the same y value

this fixes it:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1013446/treetest2.cap

Not for me.

try the link again, now it should