next »

[Jad]

matriax i want to play nowww

[WhyNot]

Wanted to test something in blender, ended up making this mockup.
I was trying to make it look a bit cheap and Ps1-ish.

[olli]

playing around with a demake of my current project, World to the West. it's a full 3d production but i thought it'd be neat to make some tiny pixel art versions of the cast, sharing a single 3 color + transparency color scheme. the idea is that all ground graphics would be white or very light.

here's some iterations on higher resolution+palette portraits as well:

[Canned Turkey]

@WhyNot
Wow that looks incredible!
You really hit the nail on the head looking like PS1 era, but I think it looks more like a handheld game with the pixel art.

[SolarLune]

Agreed. I love the colors and very PS1-feel of the world, and I like the character by herself, but I, too, think she's too simplistic in relation to the textures.

@olli - Nice pixels.

[Schoq]

you need to smear between a few more intermediate shades I think to achieve a more genuine PS1 feel (When emulating a hardware style, always keep in mind how developers on a new machine would try to use its strengths to outshine previous generations, while still of course facing restrictions). The sprite definitely has much too few colours to fit the bill.

Disregarding your stated intentions though, it looks very nice as it is. There's a style conflict between your sprite and backgrounds, but I don't think this is a problem; this kind of disparity is something we're used to from traditional animation and to some extent older game systems (where one sprite colour is wasted on transparency, making the sprite layer less detailed than backgrounds). If you keep it consistent it will actually make your the game more visually clear!

[WhyNot]

I totally agree with you guys. Character sprite looks out of place, as well as hud. I think my problem is that I was not aiming for any particular art style. Actually, If I think about it, it might look more like something from nintendo ds (aside single screen and big resolution). Many ds games had a bit more "modern" approach to pixel art (if you can call more simplistic and clean sprites "modern"), but 3d graphics was really restricted by hardware. But sprite is still off, yup.

Thanks for your feedback! I'll try to experiment more with this lo-fi 3d style.

A-and, just as bonus - I was also trying to achieve that jittery 3d effect from ps1 games. If I remember correctly it was caused by a value rounding and actually had some special algorithm behind it, but I was trying to mimic this effect in blender through simple distortion modifier. It's intentionally exaggerated on this gif because it's just a proof of concept, but I think I can tinker with it a bit more to make it look authentic.

[Torchkas]

the distortion looks bad. the effect was caused by low-bit calculations (which caused rounding). it actually had some sense to it.

this just looks like distortion. It might work if you diminish the effect, but it still won't be as authentic.

[WhyNot]

the distortion looks bad. the effect was caused by low-bit calculations (which caused rounding). it actually had some sense to it.

this just looks like distortion. It might work if you diminish the effect, but it still won't be as authentic.

Yup, you are right, but as I said, it's extremely exaggerated on this gif.
And I just wondering, how hard it would be to actually recreate this effect in some modern game engine? Let's say, in Unity 3d, because it's one of the most accessible engines out there.

[Torchkas]

I imagine you have to create a custom shader with its own rounding algorithm. I don't think it would be too hard, but you're speaking to someone with 0 experience on building shaders.

[WhyNot]

I imagine you have to create a custom shader with its own rounding algorithm. I don't think it would be too hard, but you're speaking to someone with 0 experience on building shaders.

Okay, thanks. I'll look maybe I should look into it some time.

[matriax]

Compilation of mockups i did until now for a possible Adventure game.

[Canned Turkey]

Here's another game I'll never get around to finishing.
I don't know maybe I'll work extra hard and just make it a small thing.

[Afrobear]

8x8 Tibia-like RPG.

[matriax]

Some 1bit mockup for dungeon game

[olli]

making assets for a friend's project. a rough mockup of a village scene to test out tiles and npcs

[Quicksand-T]

making assets for a friend's project. a rough mockup of a village scene to test out tiles and npcs

Cool cat 

I'd like to see the two color-schemes merged together.

[idoru]

Playing with NES restrictions. I'm not a pixel artist so it's pretty rough.

[MekaSkull]

An oldie. Something I had to get out of my system so I could continue other things 

[mgelon]

And I just wondering, how hard it would be to actually recreate this effect ^{[PS1 style rendering]} in some modern game engine? Let's say, in Unity 3d, because it's one of the most accessible engines out there.

It's quick to get into with Unity- here are some leads:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/27685
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/16314
https://github.com/dsoft20/psx_retroshader
https://github.com/keijiro/Retro3D
Affine texture mapping is a term to look into

Here is a script / shader combo that can go on a camera in Unity to mimic a lower screen resolution, which is an easy way to start evoking retro:

DownSampling.cs

Code:

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
using UnityStandardAssets.ImageEffects;

[ExecuteInEditMode]
[RequireComponent (typeof (Camera))]
public class DownSampling : ImageEffectBase
{
	public int Amount;
	
	[ImageEffectOpaque]
	public void OnRenderImage(RenderTexture source, RenderTexture destination)
	{
		material.SetInt("_DownSampling", Amount);
		Graphics.Blit(source, destination, material);
	}
}

CustomDownSampling.shader

Code:

Shader "Custom/DownSampling"
{
	Properties
	{
		_MainTex("Base (RGB)", 2D) = "" {}
		_LowResAmount("DownSampling", int) = 10
	}
	Subshader
	{
		Pass{
		ZTest Always Cull Off ZWrite Off
		CGPROGRAM
			#pragma vertex vert_img
			#pragma fragment frag
			#include "UnityCG.cginc"

			uniform sampler2D _MainTex;
			uniform int _DownSampling;

			fixed4 frag(v2f_img i) : SV_Target
			{
				half2 newUV = i.uv * _ScreenParams.xy;
				float u = (floor(newUV.x / _DownSampling)*_DownSampling) / _ScreenParams.x;
				float v = (floor(newUV.y / _DownSampling)*_DownSampling) / _ScreenParams.y;
	
				return tex2D(_MainTex, float2(u,v));
			}
		ENDCG
		}
	}
	Fallback off
}

*Shader in action so that I'm not completely off topic