WIP Small Works Art Thread

I took a break after the Great Forums Debacle of 2016. I'm not going to be nearly as active, but I'm around.

I appreciate the compliment - I improved by going simpler. Further, that's not just a visual art thing - I've spent some time looking at the 'common' code I was trying to build, and simplified some of that too. Pretty much, going for speed instead of technical (referring to technique) perfection.

That is one scary druid-leprechaun thing. You could build a horror game around nothing but this one thing. He's like Gimli meets SAW meets Five Nights at Freddy's.

Remember - shooting the anomaly is a "bad" idea. Shooting anomalies create as many problems, as they solve. Also, there will be cheesy garbage can robots, because I would be doing retro sci-fi a major disservice if I failed to include them.

 

Well thats the thing. Its not the characters blood. Its not damage blood fx. It is after killing enemies a ton of their blood splashes all over the player in an exaggerated fashion. As for the mirroring, I also don't really like that too much but its because of how I originally unwrapped the UVs of the model, this can't really be changed. The model is symmetrical and when I originally did the uv maps and texturing I only textured one side of the entire model pretty much, that side would always mirror to the other because the uvs are on the same coordinates. Having blood fx was never planned. but then I started messing around with it and thought "woah, this makes my game look more edgy" - But I would need to undo the current uv setup if I want a more natural looking looking blood stain effect.

haha thanks. This character is for a horror game actually. Except, this is the main character of the game. You could get covered in blood at certain parts of the game.

Thats exactly the proper mindset for indie devs to get into.
Going simple is always the way. Esp if you are a solo game dev. Simple and minimal and keeping the projects scope realistic. being able to work fast on projects and seeing results quicker is more rewarding and doesn't make you loose motivation and interest like bigger projects do. Gonna definitely follow your progress on this new project. I really enjoyed seeing the evolution of The Hero's Journey from start to finish. Can't wait to see what you have next man!

 

If it's not his blood, then I say go all out!

I've had exactly the same problem mirroring problem, so I know your pain. In the end I ended up changing my UV workflow to just mirror the limbs without splitting the torso. I think it really only becomes problematic when the patterns meet at the seams. It's only the Rorschach test parts along the seam itself that really ruin it, so I'd say either even out the splatter around there or just make sure the blood pattern doesn't get too close to the seams.

 

I've learned a lot in the past half year, and I'm re-doing my Dungeon+ Pack . Not all, but many of the meshes will be replaced, and a bunch will be added. This will be "Alcove 001", with the "Dark Stone" texture set.

 

My glamorous first steps in learning animation. Animation really isn't my strong suit, so I'm going to start from the very basics and move onto more complex stuff as I go. The plan is to try and do most of these exercises, and hopefully after that I'll be able to make some passable animations for my own game projects.

So, starting with something simple:

 

Ha! I love it.

You know, I got to say that I haven't said much about your art but it's starting to have an unsettling "Five Nights at Freddy's" sort of charm.

Now I'm kind of dying to play it.

 

I think what's cool about snowconesolid's style is that it reminds me of playing with action figures when I was a child. Because he's consistent with that style, his game worlds recapture that feeling consistently.

He's definitely on to something with his style.

 

wooooaaah thanks! haha. I'm not really a big fan of the FNAF series but I do like the art style and design of the creepy animatronics Scott created. I can't really say anything from my new game is inspired by fnaf, but my previous game "Potato Thriller" - the design of Potato man had some inspiration and influence from fnaf.

Thanks Asvarduil. It makes me feel good that you said "consistent style" haha. This wasn't really the case years ago in my older projects. I was terrible with consistency and all my games just looked like a bunch of random crap thrown together (not saying that isn't happening with current projects as I still do tend give that random crap feel off in parts of my games lol) "Playing with action figures" "game worlds recapture that feeling" - thats actually a really interesting way of looking at it. Also, thank you. Speaking of action figures, I was a huge action figure nerdy kid who would set up these scenarios and play them out. And like, I wasn't the kind of person who just collected action figures and keep them in their box, I would have adventures with them! ( I didn't have any friends....) lol off topic.

 

I'm working on the Pistol. I'm still not happy with it, though this version is closer to my thumbnail and the emitter coil is clearly visible.

I'm also not sure about my health bar, instead of the weird pink, I think I might switch it to green, or even make it phase color as the health bar decreases (green -> red).

Still, there's an anomaly *click-clack* Time to make Janeway proud!

 

I like it.

I think it conveys an offbeat retro sci-fi vibe.

 

yeah actually I was going to comment on your UI. I really like it. Its simple and clean and looks good. The ui works really well. Only thing is the color scheme, as you pointed out. It feels weird having a pink health bar (not that there is anything wrong with that) its just, next to the light blue, the colors look like the standard newborn baby boy or girl colors if you know what I am saying. (Don't get me wrong pink and blue combination has always been my personal color scheme lol my mascot thing but darker toned versions) I think change it to green, the health bar or blue. And maybe have the ammo ui smaller and fit on top of the health bar? That way you won't have two huge ui bars covering a good portion of the bottom of the screen? Maybe resize both down a bit actually. Do you see how the health bar is covering/overlayed ontop of the actual 3d gun model? Personally, I feel like that should be a no no. Don't have a main item/weapon of the game get covered up by game ui. So, ui style itself is nice. Just reconsider color scheme and placement and size of the ui. Just my honest feedback.

and now for me to spam more of my project stuff. Well, this is more of a tip I want to share with you guys. I personally don't like unity's terrain system. Its messy to work with and terrains usually end up looking like crap (just from my own experience working with terrains in unity) if you are working with landscape environments, those could get complex. I think it is better to model them as individual pieces.

So here is an example from my game I recently was working on. I wanted to create a river-ish section. Or just an area where two pieces of the land separate. So the mesh could be used as something else like maybe canyon top, or mountain separation, etc. It could just be re-textured to fit whatever kind of land splits. I simply just textured it with regular grass/mud implying its a little river. Here is the model.


And now here is a quick demo scene to test it out in unity (going to completely give this a makeover, and a more darker look, fill it with foliage, trees, do lighting, etc to fit with my actual game. so this screen is just to get a better understanding for scale proportions and how it would actually work out)


but yeah. I tried doing something similar to this a while back using the unity terrain system. making a simple river was just a pain because you have to sculpt it in and then you have all this unnecessary extra polygons and a big ugly landscape that looks awkward, etc. Maybe I just suck with the unity terrain tools. Thats probably it. But simply just modeling a river in blender saved me a bunch of times and polygons.

 

Could you reveal a bit about how you textured that terrain piece with multiple tiling textures? Particularly about how you get them to blend together. Is it just a trick with the unwrapping or a shader or something?

 

Good critiques, I'll work on it when I get home. I had a feeling I'd done something wrong when the ammo counter was on the opposite side of the screen from the weapon. Kind of a confusing setup to start with. Still, that'll help me make it better.

 

Thats actually a really good question. In the past I always struggled with blending textures together for natural landscapes. Its something that can be tricky. One of the benefits of using terrain is that you could just simple blend in different textures like dirt and grass, you can have some patches of mud painted on, or maybe paint on different variants of grass like dead grass, etc.

You can't really do that when you model the pieces like I did. The way I modeled this particular part kind of creates that illusion that the grass and underground dirt are blending in, but really up close you can kind of see this perfect straight line of separation which is not natural looking. However for the purposes of game development and keeping things at a good poly count level it works just fine + plus with lighting, fx and other props to decorate the area it won't really be visible in game to the player.

I was originally going to write this long reply here on this thread but thought its not really the proper place for such a big post. So instead I just wrote this big article on my blog talking about working with landscapes for games over here

https://goo.gl/cyQv20 - Maybe you might find it useful so I thought I would share.

But pretty much, long story short, the trick is in the mesh itself. Having good clean topology and understanding where what textures should go where. Keep in mind it will never be perfect. But for the purposes of games, it just works.

 

Thank you for sharing that. If you wanted to hide the seam a bit more you could model a sort of lip over the edge of the riverbank that hides the transition, but that's really the only other way I can think of improving it without that doesn't have major drawbacks or require resorting to clever shaders.

Also, ditto to what the others are saying about your art. You have a very unique style and its always interesting to see what you're going to come up with next.

In other news, more low res sci-fi stuff:


Texturing in pixely low res is surprisingly difficult, particularly getting the UVs to line up with the pixels without distorting the unwrap.

There's also the matter of resolution. Both the gun and the character use 128x128 textures while the environment uses 64x64 tiles (Technically, only 60x60. The remainder is used for edge padding). Is it just me or does the character stand out a bit?

 

I think it's standing out because it's in much higher apparent detail than the environment around it.

 

I really like the gun.

But yeah, the face is way to low res compared to everything else.

Also, why 64 x 64 for the walls and floors? Wasn't Doom, Build Engine, and Quake all higher than that?

BTW, I love the retro style.

 

Thank you!

64x was just what I started working with originally. I think I might try re-texturing the environment at a higher resolution and make an alternate, lower res texture for the characters gun (keeping the higher for the first person model) and see how that looks. Right now I'm getting the feeling that the character has been scaled down in the environment because of the difference in detail.

 

Did a quick upscale and touched up the details a bit. Old on the left, new on the right (just the wall and the floor textures):


Does that look any better?

 

I'd say so. I prefer the one on the right.

 

Thanks man! right back at ya. Im also really digging your sci-fi game. These screens are really nice and I love the pixel look you are going for. Iv said this before in an older post, but everytime I see screenshots of your more recent sci-fi stuff, I keep getting this nostalgic trip back to MGS1. The style works so well. Actually, I wanted to ask you about your textures, are those modified pixelized versions of actual photo texture images or are these hand drawn texture work?

The one on the right definitely looks much better. It still portrays that pixely/low res style you are going for while at the same time not being too low res.

I think the reason I keep getting mgs1 vibes is because of the low res textures and the character and environment he is standing in reminds me of cyborg ninja. I wanna see more of this, keep updating

 

Thank you! The textures are done completely from scratch. I usually just try to treat it like a regular digital painting.

 

My test cube room is getting a bit crowded. I'm going to have to make actual rooms soon.



I've added a 'button' (the funny screen), an interact trigger (you can't see it, but it's right in front of me), and a generic door. Right now the door animation is broken, though - when I trigger it, the door warps way up to (0, 0, 0), assumes it's default rotation, and doesn't actually animate.

Still, this isn't the programming thread, so, art! Also, I think the pistol is looking better now. I also did the UI tweaks suggested by @snowconesolid. I forwent the weapon thumbnail, because you've got a weapon out. Still, I may make the bar thinner, because keeping it at 200x32 is still clashing with the fact that the player is holding their sidearm out.

 

That's awesome! really good texture work man.

The UI is starting to look so much better! yeah that green health bar above makes so much more sense and feels right. Also, the little separate ui inside for the door is such a cool idea!

Look at my shiny new axe!
You can chop trees and murder enemies with it

 

Yes!

The UI is actually an anti-inspiration from Star Trek. So, right now I'm watching Enterprise - no, I don't need mental help - and one thing that bugs me is the NX-01's computer interface. It's completely unusable, because writers are writers, and don't deal with UX for software...I do. Also, they're pretty blinking lights.

So, without going over my time/simplicity budget (said budgets are not big), I did take the time to figure out a general setup for 'realistically' portraying computer systems in my raygun gothic world. It's simple, and from that simplicity it feels advanced...except for the parts that feel like they're out of the 80s (I am being retro.)

But enough gushing. I've got more goodies to create for y'all...

 

Spoiler: REALISTIC WALKING ANIMATION (GIF)

Looks good. Is that just a texture or are you going for a Doom 3 style computer interface?

 

Just a texture, but triggering it changes the texture.

Edit: Been busy...working on the ENS Bonaventure, the player's ship. This is a Gravity Lift room, with no internal lighting for the ship yet. I finally got doors to work properly. Next up, human models, and the enemy for the demo I'm working on for Feedback Friday.

 

oooh fancy!!!!


things getting creepy

 

Still working on my low poly art. I did some guns a particle effects today:

 

Weapon GIF!



Needs more blood.

 

Getting tired of developing...
Think i'm going to quit making games after this one... (temporarily)

 

Breaks are good. Take them, and do other things - it'll help you get more ideas. There's a reason I've fallen into a pattern of only releasing once every two years - it takes time to get a powerful inspiration.*

Also, those vampires remind me of Count von Count. "How many bushes are there? One...twoo...thrreeee bushes! Aah! Aah! Aaaaaaaah!"

*: I do try to release more frequently, but the games usually fail due to lack of inspiration and losing my way. It'd also help if I'd stop trying to make really large-scale games.

 

yeah man, I feel like I have grinding at this for a long time now. I signed up here and starting using unity back in 2011. I even remember you back from when I started. You and a couple of other unity forum users where like the original daily posters (to me at least). haha. Think you have been around longer then me even. But ever since I started my goal was to always release as many games as I could. Each year I released at least 2 or more games. Think I have about 22-24 games made with unity + a S*** ton of unfinished projects scattered allover my hardrive. Don't get me wrong, i'm not trying to brag or anything. It's not like any of those games where actually good or amazing quality or huge success. It was the exact opposite of that. Not gonna lie, those where all pretty bad games (I have wasted years of my life confirmed). Some would be bigger, some would be small simple mobile games, but all of them where made out just for the fun of it. Wasn't until I released Potato Thriller back in 2016 that made me realize I want to make games for a living. It was my first actual game that wasn't like a stupid project (well it was very stupid) but I mean it was the first time I had a game get on steam and people actually started to play something I created. It was a great feeling. And motivated me to do more.

But staying motivated is really hard. Lack of inspiration is a huge one I also have the same problem with the size of my games. I end up making this huge game with a ton of assets and levels and everything. (and as mentioned before, I do create everything myself. Also, I rarely ever reuse any of my old models/ assets from previous games because I feel like they have become outdated.) Potato Thriller was my biggest game, which came to nearly 89 unity scenes by the end of everything. My next project that I have been posting about, I started this shortly after I released Potato Thriller, I want this one to be like my ultimate game. My biggest, most advanced project most polished game. Then I might just start doing smaller ones. Or maybe this current game will be my only release for 2017.

But to add to what you said about powerful inspiration, it also takes a great deal of time to create a full game. It sometimes feels very draining actually. Dude, I remember following your thread about your "The Hero'es Journey" game, and I could feel the endless hours of work, time and effort put into that. I can't speak for you, but I remember when you finished it, you had this very satisfying post. It must of felt very rewarding and doing something like that is an accomplishment. Lol, getting off topic here. Didn't mean to make this thread an un-motivational discouraging post for any other game devs out there. Creating something is always fun.

Heres some "art" post now so that I am somewhat relevant to the thread:




So about the screenshots above - you see the very "Limbo" style going on. This is not part of the final game and it is not intentional. This is actually the result of the unity lighting system somehow breaking when I was testing my game. So it is a bug. I was surprised when I saw it and thought it looked so cool so I took some screenshots.

For those of you interested in actually making "Limbo" styled graphics, its actually not that hard to do and you can achieve this in many ways. The most obvious and simple way is to probably just give every model a black material. But lets say you have a game with textures, different colors, etc and you are not happy with how it looks. So you decide that you want a different art style. Instead of putting a black material on everything, I found that another way to get this look is by simply adding in the "Depth Of Field" script (its one of the deprecated depth of field scripts, not the new one) and turning on "Visualize" in the inspector, you can then adjust the different amounts of black/white ratios (which is really the Focal Distance, Focal Size, Aperture settings). This is probably not the best way to achieve this look, but it is a neat quick simple easy little fun trick to do in the unity engine.


Looks like Farore's Wind from Zelda OoT lol




Pick those nostrils!

@Asvarduil about the vampire character, lol yeh he is very much going to be like this generic Muppet type character similar to the count. This is actually a much older character model I made a while back for a game project I was working on but then lost motivation and moved onto something else. Think I showed these screens before, but I was making a cel-shaded toon styled game where the vampire guy was going to be the main characer.




But now, I am using him as a villain in my next upcoming game. Darker, less cartoony and also for
comedic relief



and now I will stop posting in this thread for about 2 weeks because I think I over did it this time....


More Updates soon...

 

I added bear traps for you to step on. They are pretty big. Didn't bother to resize.
Thought it looks cooler if the bear trap just snaps half way into the characters body instead of just one leg....

 

HUD. It's only half implemented but I like the clean, minimalist look. Zeros on the right are for ammo type I haven't decided on yet.

 

@Blacklight - Very slick!

For me, I've been working on the ENS Bonaventure (Earth Commonwealth Navy Starship). It's a very small ship, a Sif-class Scout vessel, with a complement of eight officers and very spartan accomodations. That's right, you don't start off as the captain of something like an incarnation of the Enterprise or the Infinity, and in my project, you never get a bigger ship - the game isn't about the ship this time.

Still, you start off on it, because it's a useful place to teach new players the most basic controls (moving, jumping)


Pictured above: The bridge. Navigation is on the left, Tactical on the right.

The Earth Commonwealth Navy uses the technology they've developed - the gravitic deck plates are a relatively recent invention.


Pictured above: The barracks. For eight crewmen, there are four beds.

Because this is a small scout ship, the Barracks on Deck 3 doubles as a training area, mess hall, and medbay (though that's rarely invoked due to the missions a scout ship is given. Officers perform 'hot-bunking'; there are two shifts, Alpha and Bravo. When Alpha is on duty, Bravo has training and sleep time, until the next rotation. The Captain and First Officer have a two-hour offset from the rest of Alpha shift in order to convey situational status to the next shift.

The Barracks are incomplete, but you can come up here to get a fresh weapon at any time.


Pictured above: Engineering. The coils here are the deceptively complex Phase Drive that powers Commonwealth ships.

This is Engineering. It's still far from complete, but this is the gist of the thing. It's got a massive Phase Drive, which is the Commonwealth's preferred FTL method. Instead of tunneling into another dimension, or violating physical laws, the Phase Drive is actually a failed attempt at a time machine - it was discovered that time is really malleable, but it always had a sort of rubber-band effect that caused a person to 'snap back' to when they were supposed to be. Of course, this 'snap back' didn't apply to the three physical dimensions we're all familiar with. Physicists were very skeptical of this development, until it was proven over and over.

This form of FTL has drawbacks. Engaging the Phase Drive at low speeds does very little. Engaging the Phase Drive at high speeds is a bad idea, because Commonwealth sensors have limited distance - you could plow right into a star without knowing it. Scouts like Bonaventure are invaluable to the fleet, because they map space, allowing bigger and mightier ships to respond quickly to more pressing situations.

When not screwing the space-time continuum, Engineering can adapt technologies to suit situations. Naval engineers have been involved in research of archaeological finds on numerous worlds. If they were to run into alien technology, they'd be more than happy to learn what makes it tick...then learn what makes it tick better.

 

Hi all!
Finally started my long awaited (awaited by me that is) top-down RPG game. You know, the "one special game" which almost everyone of us wants to make. Until now it was only in my mind but after i actually started i realized what a long road ahead.

Created some basic layout of starting village


and a welcome sign. Very depressing one

 

I've managed to do decent looking clouds shader. It's for mobile game so it's very cheap(only 5 to 10 particles).

Spoiler: Gif animation

 

Got my hands on ZbrushCore recently, and I've been hacking away at this character. It's still very much in its early stages, though I'd love some feedback, especially on the cloth.

 

That's a pretty amazing hat.

 

I'm building some buildings. Khrushchyovka, to be precise! Here's what I have so far.

 

ooohhhh!!!! Everything about this screen is perfect. Minimal UI, nice pixel/particle/fire effect from the gun. The environment, the weapons, colors, etc. everything in this frame is consistent and well made. And that blood splattered all over the ground is lovely. Well done. Very well done!

I'm working on a cave scene

 

More progress on secret cave/hideout

 

Hey! I can see my hand! I can also see my feet! Does this mean...



...I've got a model!



...Oh crap, I'm wearing a red shirt in a Sci-Fi setting...this is gonna be great... (and, yes, there is a female variant too.) I need to finish their faces. I've already set to work on their animations.

 

Bit more of a development. It's now built out of modular pieces, so outer panels, windows, balconies, stories are all there to swap out.



Also oh my god the image uploader barely works.

 

Looks cool. Is this going to have interiors as well?

 

I finished the pack, everything is in Unity right now!






Final Render



All that's left is to make a demo level which will be helpful for people purchasing the pack.
Making one right now.
I might get this baby for submission this month! ​

https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/modular-dungeon-pack-catacomb.398141/

 

Yup! Modular interiors are planned, at the minute they're just satic room layouts than can be placed in the outer shell but I'm hoping to make each 'room block' modular too.