I give up on lighting and need a tutor!

Hey guys, I been trying to get my game to look beautiful with low poly art for 2 weeks now, and lighting / shaders is causing me huge problems and I can't seem to get it look nice with low poly models for my android phone. I am willing to admit after bashing my head on lightmapping for insane hours, I need help. I have made my own models with blender and did my own UV mapping, so changing that won't be an issue.

I was hoping someone could help tutor me for a bit on lighting / shaders / materials on Skype. To clarify more, I am doing an android game, using mobile shaders ( as I don't know how to create my own for my own needs), and I cannot do realtime lighting as that would be horrible for mobile devices (trying to achieve a high framerate still), I been trying to figure out Baked GI but it just looks ugly.

Obviously bashing my head for many days/weeks I am aware of normal techniques like static batching, etc. So I do have some knowledge.

Some references of what I am trying to achieve:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Koukoi.CrashingSeason

Save me unity forums, please!
Let me know your Skype if you are up to the task!

 

I don't think Grow Home is using Baked GI. Or any GI at all for that matter.

 

Well my understanding of shaders / lighting and how to do stuff is just shaky in general, even after a few weeks. Grow Home is just a reference of the type of art style I am trying to aim towards. I understand some stuff may not be possible for mobile.

 

A lot more time. It's largely experience and knowledge (unless you are just straight up copying settings from somewhere). Two weeks is nothing, just a drop in the bucket. We have some the best in industry on our team(s), and they will spend several months exploring and tuning/tweaking to get a solid look that takes into account multiple environments/variables. And these folks have deep skills and decades of experience.

Just keep working on it and exploring and gaining knowledge, there are not really any shortcuts to get "beautiful" results. You can get passable results quickly, but quality takes time.

 

Also, these forums are a useful resource and there knowledgable people (and a few trolls, but that's another story) on here, but to get help you need to make more specific questions.

Saying you have practically nothing and asking how to get your game to look like a finished game is too broad a question. I literally don't know where to start.

 

I for sure try to find as much information as I can on the forums. I'm not asking how to create 3d models, just asking like what type of shaders for mobile should I use, and lighting practices to help push me in the right direction for the desired art style in my first post. Like zombiegorilla said, I understand it takes time / practice and I am not asking for AAA quality like Grow Home, but at least some type of passable results would be great. Even picking someone's brain for 10min could be just what I need.

 

Paid, unpaid?

Have you thought about baking shadows within blender?
Something like blender internal could provide decent visuals.

Grow Home trailer you posted appears to be using ONE light source, quite possibly dynamic one.

Are you sure that mobiles can't handle one directional light?

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Either way it would help if you uploaded some sort of test scene people could look at/tinker with.

 

I will look into baking shadows within blender thanks! I mean to say mobile shouldn't have a dynamic real time one directional light, correct?

I added my unity package of a scene I was testing with vertex colours as advice from AcidArrow in a previous thread and I know no lighting works on android phones for this so not sure what to do with that, and I made another UV mapping scene with mobile/diffuse and looks really ugly and can't seem to get it to look nicer. Both options don't seem to be working correctly.

Make a new project to import this into! Unity 5.2.4 is the version I am using it on.

 

This, combined with the fact that you're comparing your results to those of an experienced, veteran team.

Grow Home might be a small game with simple-looking graphics, but they got their gorgeous results by applying years of experience. Use it as a goal by all means, but don't let it's deceptive simplicity trick you into thinking you'll match or surpass it on your first go.

 

Before trying to develop for Android, have you tried to recreate this art style firstly on PC?

I personally did out of curiosity (with some low-poly pack from the store) and found out it wasn't really about lightning (I just used a generic directional light if I remember well) but more about ambient light, fog and a good mix of post-processing (SSAO, color balancing, etc.). So my advice would be to first recreate the style by cranking up all the graphics stuff on PC then you only start to do some optimization process to get a look-alike result on mobile.

If you still have troubles, you might want to check this asset for some guidelines:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/37726

 

Checked your project.


Have you tried.... (vertexTest_noWorkOnAndroid)

1. Delete area light.
2. Add directional light, set "cast shadows" to "hard shadows".
3. Lighting->Scene->Ambient Source, set to "Color"
4. Lighting->Scene, uncheck baked gi, precomputed gi, etc.

You sure that still doesn't work on android? Planar reflections would require some babysitting, but that looks fairly close to original.

Also, for this kind of art style, you'll want to remove all those extra polygons from the ground.