Need vector art advice easy to use with Unity

I have been doing some research on different vector graphics software that I can use for Unity.

I played around with Pixel art but I want to draw vector graphics and I am not a fan of adobe products because of the crazy price, and I intend on developing 2D games for now.

Some of the few I found were Inkscape, GIMP and Toon Boom which have some good exposure, but if I want to really start out, I want to make sure I go with the best one, according to someone's experience. (unless anyone else has another good alternative!)

I saw some comments about Toon Boom's Harmony plugin that is used to export to Unity, but I also read that there were crashes and some bugs involved with the plugin and that gave doubts.

Thanks for any advice. I apologize if this question seems similar to others, but I wanted to ask about these software specifically.

 

I really like iDraw (for both Mac and iPad). But it doesn't matter much... pick whatever works best for you.

 

Afaik there is no simple way to use vector graphics in games without rasterizing them to pixels at some point. You should find a game that has a style you want to go for and try to find out what pipeline they are using. If you think Adobe software is too expensive you might want to check out if you are eligible for an educational discount.

 

Well, it is possible to make vector art in a game, but it's not easy. You'd have to use Vectrosity or something similar to draw the lines, and probably read in the shape definitions from something like SVG... possible, but not an easy way to go.

 

Thanks for your responses. It's news to me that Vector graphics is actually harder performance wise as a computer takes longer to load a vector image as it would have to rasterise it. If that's the case, what about games like Braid ? They don't look like they were pixel drawn. In fact, many mobile games and side scrollers have non-pixelated characters and animate smoothly.

Do you guys know how to explain this process to me? I want to understand this process of including graphics in games. I'm reading that artists "prefer" pixel art to vector. Or is there a book/link you found out explaining how these graphics work, because I'm beginning to feel my understanding is distorted.

I thought, vector graphics was more viable since they can easily scale compared to pixels. Plus they are easier to draw by hand than pixels which are more like putting puzzle pieces together.

Sorry if I'm coming off as someone who hasn't done enough research, but I'm looking for good books/resources, so far I purchased "Learning C# Programming in Unity"but so far it's only been about C# and really little about Unity (with the exception of its interface.)
At this phase I'm searching for good tools to play around with, and by good I don't mean expensive, elite quality ones. Something affordable, and actually used by many others would be ideal (for Windows.)

 

You can't generally tell by looking at a 2D game whether its artwork is fundamentally pixels or vectors (or pixels that were generated from vectors, which is often the case). Ultimately it's all pixels on screen, since we haven't had actual vector displays since the 1980s.

If you find doing vector art to be easier, then by all means, do vector art. Then just decide how big you want those vector images to be on screen, and export to PNG at the appropriate resolution and scale for that use. This is a very common technique (what I referred to as "often the case" above).

I'm sorry I don't have any good books or Windows software to suggest.

 

You mean this game?
http://braid-game.com/
I can pretty much guarantee you that those are all pixel graphics, most likely drawn in Photoshop or some other digital painting application. You should forget about vector art for now if this is a style similar to what you want to achieve. Photoshop is the "gold-standard" in graphics software, the price isn't "crazy" for what you are getting. If you really want a cheaper painting application, then have a look at Manga Studio.

The best thing for you might be teaming up with an artist and focusing on making the "functional" aspect of your game. I don't mean to be discouraging but learning to create good art is incredibly time consuming and has little to do with the software you use. Imho learning to paint is a lot harder than learning to program.

 

Without a doubt, learning to program wouldn't be as hard as it is to learn to draw, but I am actually good with drawing which is why I'd thought about actually hand drawing graphics on software such as Toon Boom, Inkscape etc. The artist for that game actually used adobe photoshop and illustrator for most of his art.

I actually said the price was crazy because few years back I had seen that the full version of Photoshop was only available with the suite which was (I believe) around $50/month, which is a lot for someone who's starting out. So I looked up just now and there's a Creative cloud plan where I can purchase JUST photoshop much cheaper apparently @$20/month so I suppose that's not as bad as I used to think. Or maybe I overlooked this creative plan.

Anyway, you're right. I think I should first learn the functional aspects of my game. I want to focus on the 2D aspect first before thinking about entering 3D. I have seen Manga studio and a bunch of other cool software but a lot of reviews say photoshop is just the best.

Do you know anything about Inkscape? It seems to be really popular as well and compared right with photoshop/illustrator and GIMP.

 

Inkscape is a vector graphics program, it should not be compared to Photoshop at all, because PS is primarily used for pixel based work. Illustrator is a vector based but I am pretty sure it is leaps and bounds ahead of Inkscape. Haven't used Inkscape or Gimp in a while. I'm sure Gimp is great for what it is as a free tool, but Photoshop is just way better and I don't see any free software ever catching up. From what I've seen and testet for pure painting Manga Studio comes closest and even has a few features that Photoshop is missing, but then on the other side Photoshop can do most things that Manga Studio can and then sooo much more. I tried working with Manga Studio 1 or 2 years ago but I don't see the point relearning all the shortcuts etc.. I can use Photoshop intuitively and no other program can give me that without a massive time investment. If you don't know either one then this won't hinder you. Just be aware that Photoshop offers more possibilities and I'd consider the time spent learning it a more solid investment. As for the price, I don't know if there are still standalone non-subscription copies out there that can be bought. If you can get a copy of Photoshop CS2 or newer you should be fine. Feature additions for painters since then have been rather minor. If you are eligible for student discounts you should look into a student version of Photoshop CS6.

 

As a company, we've run into this problem many times on what would be the graphical style of our games. Our artist prefers working with vectors so we've made that as easy as possible for her. We went with Adobe Illustrator and started to build our own tech for importing vector graphics into Unity and came out with this that is now also available for others to use too: http://simplysvg.com/ The tool also works well with Inkscape.

Going "all-in" with vector graphics has made our games stand out quite well. Here's a few examples of the styles we've created:
http://tiletales.com/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vaestoliitto.kumita
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nordicedu.holvi
http://nordicedu.com/?page_id=1178

Going all in with vector graphics has given our company a competetive edge when doing client work and own games - we are very happy with the decision

 

The results look great! It's not relevant to me but people might be interested how mobile performance compares to alpha blended sprites and if or how batching works.

 

From our brief experience on sprites vs. vector graphics is that vector graphics run better. But this only works if the graphics style is truly vectorized and the meshes built from those graphics are not too complex. Batching is something we have not taken a look at yet because there has not been a need for that.

 

@tattz, that's pretty neat. Thank you for pointing it out.

 

Would this product (found on the Asset Store) be of any use to you?
http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/topics/asset-store/getting-started-svg-importer?playlist=17132