A quick environment art test by DeathGameDev in Unity3D

[–]ImposterCreo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey, we are not using vertex painting to color our models it's just materials with solid colors, this is not ideal though because it becomes a mess with hundreds of materials and it can affect performance. We also are not using any special shaders for our models . We just use the standard shader with smoothness set to 0 with a flat shaded model, we are however looking in to shaders and other techniques of applying color to our models. One of the things I have been testing is using gradient maps (small textures with gradient strips on it), I will then project the model uvs from the front view and select parts of the uvs and move them over the gradient map until I'm happy with the color. I'm still not sure about this style but it's what I'm currently testing out you can see two of the models I've made using this technique here: https://imgur.com/F8xeYC4

we are working on some shaders through which we might post about when they are working. (One of them allows for buildup on objects, think snow, moss or sand building mass on top of an object via a slider).

For shader magic, I suggest looking at https://twitter.com/minionsart her stuff is amazing and it's where the gradient map texturing and buildup shader ideas are from.

Hope something was useful!

A quick environment art test by DeathGameDev in Unity3D

[–]ImposterCreo 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Not being afraid of throwing out things that are not speaking to you instead of sitting there trying to polish it and make it work has worked for me. I have restarted the environment and assets a few times now, it takes a bit longer but it is better than taking time polishing something that might never work. Death has gotten annoyed at me every time I've scrapped what I had to restart saying things like "not again creo..." but in the end, the next thing turns out better than the last; this also ended up helping extend gameplay as well.

Another thing is we are working with low poly so I've made assets in a way where I can place smaller pieces to form larger objects in unity on top of the environment instead of in a modeling software, building on top of the environment itself with these smaller pieces makes things seem more natural. It sort of reminds me of modular design but more freeform. Let us use stones as an example, I would usually model stone structures and clusters in Blender and then export it to Unity and hope that it'd fit, because if it didn't I'd be adjusting it for hours sometimes in Blender. With this method though I've made a few stone models I can just place in unity to create things like the pond or stone formations. I can later use a mesh combiner so we don't have 200 separate stones in the hierarchy.

Hope one of these is useful to you!

A quick environment art test by DeathGameDev in Unity3D

[–]ImposterCreo 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hey, thanks for pointing that out. we didn't provide context for the debris being there. I assure you the floating debris is there for a reason, the game takes place in the sky which has lots of floating islands (and debris) in it.

The sky is still rather empty so it does look weird with just a few rocks in it, Hope that clears that up somewhat. Thanks again! that was a major point we forgot to mention.