Ian Cheng Art Style?

I’m a student working to simulate animal behavior using the unity engine, and I recently became enamored with an artist called Ian Cheng. Specifically, I love the art style of his simulations, images of which are provided below. It seems low-poly, but there’s a specific sheen to it, more plastic than metallic. It's really simple but it’s hard to recreate. I feel like there’s a game I’ve played before which has the exact same art style, but I can’t seem to find it. Games like "Abzu" and "Grow Home" are similar like low-poly style but they don't have this same sheen or sleekness - I can't really describe it. Do you guys have any advice on shaders and 3d modelling techniques?

 

Taking a cursory look at it, it seems like raw (that is, untextured) vertex colouring alongside a light ramp, with a bit of chromatic aberration on top. It's not all that low-poly, but the flat look does bring out the outlines a lot. It's not all that hard to write a simple shader for the geometry part, but you'll have to do the vertex colours manually in your modeling software.

I've actually written a couple shaders to get a similar look (just with textures):



To make light ramping, you use an input ramp texture and sample a point from it according to light intensity, taking care to keep the texture unfiltered for some nice sharp lines. This shot actually uses vertex colour for the background geometry and I also happen to have an untextured variant lying around. it'll be a breeze to add vertex colouring to it if you'd like to use it. If you want to get into the code, I'll see if I can add in some comments to walk you through what each part does.

 

Yep. I agree with what Le Capitaine said above.

Interestingly, there are a handful of ways to achieve that look. I did something close to that many years ago, when playing around in blender.

Another way to achieve that stylised look you are trying to get, is to paint some basic colours and shadows onto a texture in gimp or Corel draw, make some stylised low poly or semi low poly models, apply a basic simple shader or toon shader with some tweaks made to it, and apply the simple stylised texture onto it.


Here's some explanations in detail:

The models might be low poly, or semi high poly models, made and stylised to look strange and unusually abstract looking.

The jelly luminous appearance of the models, can be a result of a specially made shader/toon shader, or a basic shader with some tweaks made to it. So when the light hits it, it gives the models that unusual luminous look.

The detail and shadows on the enviroment can easily be done, by painting all of the details and shadows that don't move, onto the texture for the enviroment. Doing it the way I mentioned would be good for mobile. Or maybe, use a special toon shader, and apply it to the entire enviroment mesh.

And the textures on the characters, if there are any, might be colours simply painted in a stylised manner onto a texture. Or it might be just a special toon shader applied to the models, without a texture.