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[Pishtaco]

I really like this; and it's the kind of look I would like to go for on my current project. Can you say a bit about how it is done?

[Geti]

@Pishtaco: Model object, unwrap object, use blender's texture paint to paint the texture on the object. Dialated the colour on the textures and sharpened once they were done. Map was a 1024x1024 I think, which I'm unhappy with because it's gigantic and I'm used to working with tiny pixmaps, haha. Diffuse only, and no lighting which is why it's a little flat (didn't have enough time to light it properly in the texture...). It's really just a style test so I'm glad you like it.

@Joshua: If I had more time I would've actually painted some proper cloth, did it in a break though so hardly had time to get the whole thing done. Crate texture was more or less still a blockout



experiment today with vertex painting only.
I'm happy with the sharp edges you can sneak in, like around the clavicle in this. If I had more time I'd re-do it from scratch, but alas - I dont

408 faces, 638 tris. No texture.
Blender2.6 + a sharpen in photoshop on the render. right click -> view for larger if you're that interested.

Was actually really quick to do even without colour picking. Great for just dropping some colour in there, without the hassle of OMG UNWRAP and then deciding about 30mins or an hour into texturing that your unwrap is worse than hyper-aids and you should start again from zip.

Anyone know how to colour-pick while in vertex paint mode? It totally sucks several dicks if you can't, I don't like having to manually get back to "about" the same colour even if it is really a minor annoyance :/

[Azure Lazuline]

I love the style. Why is it that indie games have cooler graphics? Also, I use Blender but have never touched that tool before. I should experiment with it if it can do things like that.

[Geti]

Reworked the topology and the colours, haven't re-rigged it yet.


Found a way of drawing in some fake geometry like the cuffs on the pants, the pockets and the clavicle. Obviously requires there to be some geo there to draw the lines on, but not as much as modelling out that sort of stuff. It's like cheating a texture, which is fun.

444 faces, 670 tris all up.
No texture, just vertex colours.
Dropped the AA for good measure.

Still got no idea how to colour pick so I did this one in passes (block colour, shadows, highlights, decals (blood and dirt) :/ I really hope colour picking is possible.

[SolarLune]

Still got no idea how to colour pick so I did this one in passes (block colour, shadows, highlights, decals (blood and dirt) :/ I really hope colour picking is possible.

Blender's got a palette add-on that you can use. It's packaged with the executable, if I recall. Works with both Vertex Paint and Texture Paint modes. Click the + next to the spinner to add a preset (save, I think). Press the plus below that to add a color. You can name individual colors, as well as change their positions in the palette. Click the little tabs below the colors to select them.

[Geti]

Thank god for solarlune! Will be trying that out on the next something I try.



More work, slightly better anatomy.
Got to edit the old file into the above, haha.

470 faces, 724 tris.

Calling him done for now, might rig+animate later if I want to put it into something playable, for now it just seems like work for no fun, haha.

[SolarLune]

Thank god for solarlune!

Hurrah! Do I win something? Ha ha. It's cool that Blender ships with a lot of cool add-ons, but if you don't check, you'll never know they exist. Ivy, trees, rocks (I think?), terrain, even exporting from the game engine to an executable - all optional add-ons.

[Geti]

But no vertex normal editing and vertex normals reset on entering edit mode...

Sure as hell makes modelling realtime trees a bitch, there's an addon that resets the normals all facing upwards and the trunk normals facing away from the 3d cursor, but that's just not as good as hand-edited normals :/



Last one for now, I promise Figured someone might want a look at the wires.

Speed-rigged it in study break.
Could reduce polycount to 700 without harming silhouette or vert colours I think, but time's up considering doing what st4lis did here on the texture for this kinda stuff to cheat some more detail in there (eg lines around the ribs, noise or lines through the hair) - loving that guy's work at the moment, haha.
I should also likely consider dropping in some actual hand geometry if I come back to it 

Here's the image I'm talking about in particular: NOT MY WORK

[Geti]

7.4MB GIF HERE: http://www.deviantart.com/download/308702980/forest_assets_16_6_12_by_forsakengeti-d53skqs.gif

shows a runthrough of the test scene.

copypaste from dA:

Playing with this vertex painting method - adding texture in there basically as a lightmap. I've been wanting to work on some vegetation for ages and found some inspiring work by oskar stalberg, so did this before bed tonight.

2x 128x128 diffuse maps
1x 128x128 alpha map (same as diffuse for vegetation)

112-135 tris per tree, 32 tris per large grass chunk, 8 per small grass chunk, 64 per bush (horrible optimisation there, haha)

2.1k tris in the whole scene, but it's pretty small and sparse, as the animation shows

Gonna see if I can get something like this into unity later on, would be much nicer to demonstrate the scene in-engine, haha.

------

This was fun. Gonna see if I can get a proper set of assets together for a proper scene. I'd love to get a faster workflow together, but I think that's likely something that comes with time.

Found the colour picker btw, but the palette tool is super useful anyway Thanks solarlune.

[emacs]

Geti your stuff makes me jealous of your skills.  Your work is ace!

[Geti]

Thanks, it means a lot  I'm really just starting out with 3d so I'm glad that you reckon it's looking good

 Only one way to beat jealousy though - improve! All of this was done with free tools, in breaks from study or work.

[mono]

Wow, productive lately. Nice stuff Geti!   

[Geti]

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Shot of my troubles: http://scr.hu/4yr/b3m90

As you can see, backfaces are rendering just fine (woooo dont have to manually duplicate faces in modelling _NISE_) but there's also massive sorting issues. The trunk renders through the leaves from multiple angles.

Here's my shader (unity shaderlab thingy)

Code:

Shader "Unlit_VertexColor_Transparent"
{
	Properties
	{
		_Color ("Multiply Color", Color) = (1,1,1,1)
		_MainTex ("Base (RGB) Transparency (A)", 2D) = "white" {}
	}
 
	SubShader
	{
		Tags {"Queue"="Transparent" "RenderType"="TransparentCutout"}
		
		Lighting off
		Cull off
		ZWrite Off
		
		Pass
		{
			Blend SrcAlpha OneMinusSrcAlpha
		
			CGPROGRAM
				#include "UnityCG.cginc"
				#pragma vertex vert
				#pragma fragment frag
				#pragma fragmentoption ARB_precision_hint_fastest 
 
				struct v2f
				{
					half4 color : COLOR;
					fixed4 pos : SV_POSITION;
					fixed2 uv[2] : TEXCOORD0;
				};
		   
				sampler2D _MainTex;
				fixed4 _MainTex_ST;
 
				v2f vert(appdata_full v)
				{
					v2f o;
					o.pos = mul(UNITY_MATRIX_MVP, v.vertex);
					o.uv[0] = TRANSFORM_TEX(v.texcoord, _MainTex);
				   
					o.color = v.color;
 
					return o;
				}
	   
				fixed4 frag(v2f i) : COLOR
				{
					fixed4 c = tex2D(_MainTex, i.uv[0]) * i.color;
					return c;
				}
			ENDCG
		}
	}
	Fallback "Transparent/Cutout/VertexLit"
}

If I use Unlit/Transparent then this issue is there as well.
If I use transparent cutout then it's not.

I know it's to do with no Z sort w/ alpha blend, however it just seems retarded that I can't have semi-transparent leaves.
I'm also completely unsure of how to set up a proper Zsorted shader that also uses vert colours and alpha testing on the ZWrite

Turning on backface culling doesn't help.

Help? Is there something obvious I've missed in the last hour of lunch + shader battling?
Would someone be able to drop me some shader code that does the z sorting correctly with the vertex colour multiplication in there?

Shaders are something I really haven't touched at all. I'd love to get to know them but my first foray has been facepunchingly frustrating, haha.

[peous]

you can't have a transparent shader sorted correctly. only cutout cant work.
otherwise "face" sorting is necessary. that is not available in Unity (or you have tu use particles for this).

so start from "cutout" and add vertex color, but do not modify alpha. I can help with this shader if u wish. but you won't have semi-transparent leaves.

[sublinimal]

Geti, you're just starting out in 3D and you've already got such a distinctive style? That's pretty impressive.

That .gif reminds me that I want to see a full-length version of your latest Ludum Dare entry.

[Pishtaco]

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Shot of my troubles: http://scr.hu/4yr/b3m90

As you can see, backfaces are rendering just fine (woooo dont have to manually duplicate faces in modelling _NISE_) but there's also massive sorting issues. The trunk renders through the leaves from multiple angles.

...

You could make the trunks and the leaves into separate objects, and draw the trunks as solid and the leaves as transparent. This would leave sorting problems on the leaves, but if they are all more-or-less the same colour that might be acceptable.

[Geti]

@Pistachio: I've thought about that but a lot of the form comes from having nice rim lighting around the edges of the leaves and faked AO using darker colours near the trunk. It might be an option though.

you can't have a transparent shader sorted correctly. only cutout cant work.
otherwise "face" sorting is necessary. that is not available in Unity (or you have tu use particles for this).

I thought this might be the case, from what I've read around. Aight I'll get to work on it - I'm not by any means inexperienced at programming, just have no experience with shader work. With some further reading this seems to be an issue that crops up in many a place. I might just alpha test and draw the foliage in such a way that it works like that - could also maybe do a 2 pass render w/ the semitransparent stuff rendered doubly but I'd like to keep the shader super agile if at all possible.

Geti, you're just starting out in 3D and you've already got such a distinctive style? That's pretty impressive.
That .gif reminds me that I want to see a full-length version of your latest Ludum Dare entry.

I'm not sure it's distinctive yet as I'm still playing with styles from tiny texture pixel art stuff (I've been a professional pixel artist for a few years now) to this recent vert colour only stuff and the mix in between that these trees are, but thank you

If I can find time to finish pastor mundi I will - I tend to want to only do art in breaks though rather than more coding.


Had some thoughts about the shader while out tonight actually, on the way to and from my girlfriend's family dinner... Since it really just uses Value on the texture, I technically have 2 free channels if I just use red for value and alpha for alpha.
Was thinking of potentially using the other 2 for wind variables, but I'm not sure I have access to that information at during a vert shader pass, heh. Got to look into it more. At worst I could get free bump and 256 colour specular mapping or something if I cheat my cards right

[Pixelgent]

translucent sorting is very possible just extremely expensive.

great looking stuff Geti!

if you want to look at some vertex color only stuff look no further than visionaryunlimited from polycount, sorry idk his real name

[ink.inc]

:D

Great work, Willy!

[Geti]

lol, read the post foo'
I'm assuming thats an example of this visionaryunlimited's work as it's not signed the way willy usually signs his stuff and isn't pixelcrunchygoodness like willy's usual work.

translucent sorting is very possible just extremely expensive.

if you want to look at some vertex color only stuff look no further than visionaryunlimited from polycount, sorry idk his real name

I take it you just render all transparent faces back to front based on camera-space Z, which involves sorting them all each frame and maximum overdraw.

I'll check him out. That style is sexy as hell, though you generally need more tris than you would with a texture for the transitions (and any hard edges do the same thing as a UV seam and duplicate verts, which while not a huge issue with such lowpoly models does impose more of a memory limit).


...So I had an idea last night that I might chip away at this afternoon before work - basically a very lofi take on crysis. lofisis if you will. I've got to figure out how I'd go about tackling terrain but I think it could be a fun environment type to build and enjoy the gameplay of the first crysis a lot.

I'm slightly concerned about copyright C+D dickwaving though, since I'm not particularly interested in wasting my time... How likely do you think crytek gmbh would be to shut down a very small fan game intended for freeware release though? I haven't done much fanart/fangames before but I have heard of zelda fangames getting kicked around as an example.

No art yet because this was conceived 9 hours ago and I slept for 8 of those.