IronManFolgore
Newbie
- Apr 9, 2018
- 81
- 296
- 163
That was unironically the exact type of 3d+2d art I was thinking of. The witness is the one with the topless girl with lipstick running away from her own murder right?
Stylized 3D
- Thread starter Douve
- Start date
Verdance
Newbie
- Apr 17, 2019
- 28
- 15
- 47
I know this is an old thread but, given OP talked about mixing 3D and 2D art I figured I'd talk a bit about my process for exactly that (and why it's not common).
For reference, just look at my pfp.
So, in my case, I make low-poly 3D models in Blender, then texture them with a mix of solid colors and pixel-art. This is where things like expressions come into play, wherein, instead of morphing the 3D model to make said expressions, I instead swap the texture. This can be limiting as it means each expression cannot extend beyond the bounds of the face polygons and needs a fair bit of tweaking as the textures can stretch very easily.
Then we get to shading. Easiest way is to just set up shaders in your 3D editor then get some rendered images. This does take quite a bit of tweaking as default shaders, like most things 3D, are designed around realism. There are toon shaders but you generally have to play around with them still quite a bit as the thresholds for each "color band" and whatnot needs to match your modeling style and it'll never do ALL the work for you. To take OP's images as examples, the first and third images are "realistic" shaders while the second has a more throttled output, making the gradients much more sudden. The lines of the second image though, are drawn by hand with what's known as a grease pencil. This creates a weird layer that floats above the image and, frankly, only looks good when viewed from one angle (which is fine for pre-rendered images).
Issue with the above shading is if you want 3D animation. Grease pencils don't work right, toon shaders often get screwy when viewed from the wrong angle, etc. All of it's a fair bit of constant tweaking of the model, textures, and the shader. Old PS1 games actually shaded the model itself, which removes lighting effects, but keeps the character's shading consistant. I do a mixture of both though, manually shading sections then also applying a shader with a steep drop-off.
So, all that requires experience in 3D modeling, 2D art, shaders, 3D animation, etc. Generally though, when someone knows one of those they tend to just go all-in on it. If you're good at 2D art make a VN, if you're good at 3D models but can't animate, make pre-rendered images like examples 2 & 3. If you can animate, just get pre-made assets and animate them. It's a lot of steps to blend all of that and sadly, each step demands quite a bit of skill in a particular subject (I'm amature at best in each imo).
Then we get to another glaring issue, consistency. If you wanna create something stylized it means you have to create EVERYTHING in the same stylized way. Just cus of how my character looks, for instance, I've been sitting there, going through that whole process of modeling, making pixel art, tweaking, etc just for things like doorknobs, chairs, beds, and planks. If I just used something like DAZ or Honey Select I could use or tweak premade assets, saving litteral months of work. All this before I can even get to writing and making the actual game.
TLDR: It requires a broad list of specialized skills and increases the workload a LOT.
For reference, just look at my pfp.
So, in my case, I make low-poly 3D models in Blender, then texture them with a mix of solid colors and pixel-art. This is where things like expressions come into play, wherein, instead of morphing the 3D model to make said expressions, I instead swap the texture. This can be limiting as it means each expression cannot extend beyond the bounds of the face polygons and needs a fair bit of tweaking as the textures can stretch very easily.
Then we get to shading. Easiest way is to just set up shaders in your 3D editor then get some rendered images. This does take quite a bit of tweaking as default shaders, like most things 3D, are designed around realism. There are toon shaders but you generally have to play around with them still quite a bit as the thresholds for each "color band" and whatnot needs to match your modeling style and it'll never do ALL the work for you. To take OP's images as examples, the first and third images are "realistic" shaders while the second has a more throttled output, making the gradients much more sudden. The lines of the second image though, are drawn by hand with what's known as a grease pencil. This creates a weird layer that floats above the image and, frankly, only looks good when viewed from one angle (which is fine for pre-rendered images).
Issue with the above shading is if you want 3D animation. Grease pencils don't work right, toon shaders often get screwy when viewed from the wrong angle, etc. All of it's a fair bit of constant tweaking of the model, textures, and the shader. Old PS1 games actually shaded the model itself, which removes lighting effects, but keeps the character's shading consistant. I do a mixture of both though, manually shading sections then also applying a shader with a steep drop-off.
So, all that requires experience in 3D modeling, 2D art, shaders, 3D animation, etc. Generally though, when someone knows one of those they tend to just go all-in on it. If you're good at 2D art make a VN, if you're good at 3D models but can't animate, make pre-rendered images like examples 2 & 3. If you can animate, just get pre-made assets and animate them. It's a lot of steps to blend all of that and sadly, each step demands quite a bit of skill in a particular subject (I'm amature at best in each imo).
Then we get to another glaring issue, consistency. If you wanna create something stylized it means you have to create EVERYTHING in the same stylized way. Just cus of how my character looks, for instance, I've been sitting there, going through that whole process of modeling, making pixel art, tweaking, etc just for things like doorknobs, chairs, beds, and planks. If I just used something like DAZ or Honey Select I could use or tweak premade assets, saving litteral months of work. All this before I can even get to writing and making the actual game.
TLDR: It requires a broad list of specialized skills and increases the workload a LOT.