Most of Adam's advice reminds me of goldsrc / early source games. For example, the lighting was baked to the lightmap texture by vrad. Resulting shadows were hard and blocky (unless you turn up the scale)
Some games do that to this day. Especially in scenes where lighting isn't dynamic except for muzzle flashes etc. It saves tons of processing power and is one of the easiest way to make VR games look incredibly nice. Think of breachers for example.
@@robrobusa indeed! A lot of games have moved away from Deferred Rendering back to using Forward Rendering with baked lighting in order to save up that VRAM for higher texture and screen resolutions. Though personally 9/10 (or more) I'd trade less crisp image quality for reactive lighting.
@@Killicon93 Yeah totally! But honestly, It always depends on what the individual game needs - if you have a moody, creepy game you really want those dynamic light/shadow interactions (Hello Alan Wake 2). But if you you need a crisp image and stable performance, baked lighting is definitely fine. :)
When I work on 3D games, I always present items or characters as 2D billboard sprites, similar to how the old Doom and Wolfenstein games' enemies work. For me personally, I find it WAY easier to make a sprite (whether it be pixel art or drawing) as opposed to a fully rigged 3D model, especially in a game jam or when prototyping.
There's some interesting tradeoffs between them, sprites are faster to make but you can't really rotate them to show an animation from a different angle. I think this is why so many indie devs make platformers, you never really need additional angles for a sprite, you can just flip its horizontal scale because the only directions you CAN do stuff is left or right.
@GameDevYal if you do just a billboard you are limited to 1 angles but if you do the doom technique mentioned you could create any angle you want and switch between them when the camera angle threshold is reached. I agree with @axolotgav it reduces complexity a lot but if you do something like outfits or character customization, the amount of drawings can add up fast I want to try the technique on for a 3rd person hack and slash
@@stagfoo Well, you can split body parts and have different layers in the billboard sprite, even animate them separately, or color the separate parts, toggle different items or outfits - like you do in 2d only games. This isn't new, lots of flash games used all of these techniques. But... you can get comfortable with modeling quick and dirty 3d shapes, compose them together and animate them crudely, with probably better results and faster than the above approach. Both have their quirks and art value.
This. If you're just doing one or two angles, it's probably faster to billboard, but if you're going to do the work to have all the different angles to try to make it look better, you're better off just going 3d.@@GameDevYal
A personal favorite of mine was the pre-Jagex buyout version of Ace Of Spades. It relied on Voxlap, which displayed everything as 2D billboarding(?) voxel squares, all software rendered. No textures were used except for the GUI and the crosshair, the default "classicgen" maps used a heightmap with voxel models added as external assets for briefcases/flags and player models & weapons.
it's so funny to me how you can still play that (look up build and shoot), but there's also openspades which has a full blown 3d renderer with volumetric fog and all that jazz it's so fucking jarring going from "this will run on the computer in your toothbrush" to modern 3d, IN THE SAME GAME
What a great game, as always it getting bought out screwed it over, maybe it could've gotten close to the leagues of minecraft and terraria if it simply didnt sell out the the worst game company.
even if indie games have objectively """worse graphics""" than triple A games, when done correctly, stylized games can blow hyper-realistic games out of the water
I think it's simply a matter of longevity, too. Picking some random examples from the video:Fez still looks great for being Fez. Goose game and Sable, too. They'll still look interesting 10 years from now. The AAA space interests me less and less, because "epic realism" is a moving goalpost. While it might push hardware advances and show off new tech, it ages poorly. Now we're in an awkward phase past the "by-necessity" AAA graphics seen in Playstation to OG Xbox or Half-Life days that look retro, but we're in a valley of diminishing returns where the distinction is ray-tracing + 3 million polygons on screen or 8k texture maps vs only 1 million and 2k texture maps. To a majority of human players immersed in the experience, it's technically impressive but doesn't add much anymore. Heck, I think I'm a decent 3D artist and I struggle to tell the difference between different AA settings or anisotropic filtering. I turn off all the excessive post processing like motion blur by default, too. "Indie style graphics" simply have an artistic timelessness, I think. The AAA sector is constantly pushing against a wall that will eventually require quantum supercomputers and neural networks using a town's worth of electricity for asset creation......and functionally, we won't be blown away as the games themselves will still have scummier business practices to pay for all that fancy tooling. Meanwhile us indie devs will keep making fun eye-catching stuff loaded with personality, using Blender and Krita on our gaming machines. We'll be just fine. :)
The most useful thing I've found myself doing visuals-wise is playing to my own strengths as a developer. I may not be great at art, but I'm a decent programmer, so whatever flair is missing in the base assets can be made up for with all sorts of cool dynamic lighting effects and particles!
I like to use a single atlas texture of gradients, allowing me to quickly texture things, leaves lots of potential up for grabs by shaders. Our latest title Cardbob uses a single texture for majority of materials, some particle effects are an exception.
I have cool art trick. So what i do is: 1-open blender. 2-See the interface. 3-Get overwhelmed. 4-Find the circle option. 5-Make a circle. 6-Try to sculpt it. 7-Blender crashes. 8-Repeat 3-4 times. 9-Quit. Hope this helps anyone who struggles with art direction.
You know what they say, human innovation is born from laziness! The creativity in these artstyle workarounds alone is what makes them so special. By breaking tradition, even if as a short-cut, you are left with an artstyle to call your own!
Miz, the way you share so openly about your process, down to the tricks you use to give your games their unique aesthetic and vibe, is so generous. In what is technically a competitive field (although it feels reductive and pretty sad to frame it that way), I imagine many people want to keep their granular design choices to themselves to maintain an edge. Yet you're always out here giving it up for free. Big ups to you, thanks for the games
I have a low poly game in the works. It's pseudo PS2-style, but without the screen shader effects. Here's a couple techniques I use to create the art-style: -Terrain is blocky, but the vertices are purposely made to not be perfectly vertical or horizontal. This gives it an angular, cartoony feel. -Material slots that denote single colors or where tiled textures occur -Generate UV's with Blender's "Smart UV Project" -Set to "Shade Smooth" on almost everything
Your retro 3D art course was probably the most helpful resource for me getting started with 3D last year and that stencil painting trick looks so good so I guess I need this course too. So many great tips in this video too!
I love how many ways, tips, and tricks you can use to make art for low cost/low skill/low time applications. And notice how not a single one of them requires a certain buzz word that steals from artists! ;P (for all the haters out there)
Love the udemy course. I always have the hardest time with work not looking how I expected the first time and with iteration in art in general, you always have lots of instances where you change your mind or scrap work in your lessons and I always find it really valuable to see someone actually go through a condensed version of the real art process. Wasn't sure how much feedback udemy gives you as a course author so wanted to come back and thank you here. :)
A mindset I like when making anything but works for assets is "is it something or nothing." Like is this anything? If it is, it's good and you're done. Obviously not always applicable but can really help with productivity
i agree with everything except the lower resolution and VHS effects, i don't think it makes anything better, like yeah it covers up errors, its like putting a paper bag over your games face. can't see the errors cause you just can't see. just render it native, let me see the errors like i do booting up quake at modern resolutions in a source port does. those effects look worse than any errors. or just let me turn it off or adjust it like dusk.
Same things happens with Indie music that created lofi, shoegaze, slacker rock. Myself, I like to drown my basement vocals by running the mic through my guitar pedals.
Thank you for making the video! There also are a lot of free lowpoly and pixel art sets that could be integrated into a game as you have showed in your brilliant series "different devs make a game using the same art set"
Being Limited creates Creativity easier as example one teacher threw some coffe on my empty Canvas it really helps. As Humans we get Overwhelmed in Life so limiting you and slowly progressing will help you more than being "Free".
Saw a video from @Impenzia where he goes around town taking pictures of random things, and just uses those as textures for stuff. Worked surprisingly well.
The particular point about the speed and ease of making assets for a game when you simplify the art more and use more abstract art reminds me of a comment someone made about Catacylsm, Dark Days Ahead and Dwarf Fortress in that the complexity of the game and the simulation can be developed further, as you don't have to worry about the complexity of creating, rigging and animating loads of assets that then have to mesh and work together or be reworked when a system is modified, removed, or otherwise changed; a 3D model of a chain-smoking wizard riding a bicycle slicked out with armour while dual-wielding uzi's against a horde of nearby zombies would be a headache to asset, resource and make for something where you need greater graphical fidelity, but for a CDDA, it's quite doable. Love the video and the experiences of other devs is an amazing resource too ^^
this is the best thing to figure out when you want a certain style pick what you like about other games figure out how's its done and stick with it i have a soft spot for pixel art so learning how to create some art was nice i would recommend if wanna do art early just start with simple stuff like characters and that's it no more than that or scope creepy becomes a problem
UA-cam recommendation is doing great today. I get to watch some videos where it's all on my thoughts but made in videos and actually executed by people like you. I enjoyed the video!
Thomas Was Alone without the lighting effect is what a 2d game looks like when you are just building the "engine" and programing the skeleton of the game. Yes, they are a bunch of rectangles for the players, enemies, and ground. Also circles for some projectiles, and triangles for ramps in some cases. Thomas wove the shapes into the plot and amazingly got away with not have to reskin much at all.
a really cheap way to add a sense of realism is add some physics object here and the. a swinging lamp, a moveable crate. in most engines they're both quick to make and easy on perfomance in reasonable numbers
Vector art(or just polygons) is vastly superior to pixel art especially for beginners IMO. It shares most of the benefits you talked about with drawing in shapes instead of lines and being able to omit excessive detail, but it's also non-destructive and can be composited with other common techniques easily. Pixel art is novel looking, but there's quite a few challenges unique to it like managing JAGGIES and matching scale. Also Shaders are criminally underused despite being one of the most effective tools for adding visual flair, despite the usability improvements they've gotten in the last five years(instant previews in most engines, node graphs). In general, I very much have enjoyed using generative tools like Blender geometry nodes and curve editors for terrain.
Also, love Adam to death. His talk(ua-cam.com/video/wb22xeh_VqM/v-deo.html) about game art changed the way I do things a lot: - Making a full mockup of what you want things to look like in photoshop - Don't use placeholder art(Probably covered by his advice not to spend more then an hour on any asset, but bears repeating) - Start with art first always.
Also, vector art is very easy to scale, tween and rotate. You also get circles for free. Being able to scale things easily is going to make that last 10% of the 90% where different resolution settings are tested so much easier. Pixel art, however... you are restricted to only scaling by integers and rotating an asset is a huge risk.
When I first started doing digital art I had no tablet to draw on, and I wasn't willing to go through the pain of drawing with a mouse. That led me down two paths: 1 - Drawing in smash bros for wii U. That game lets you edit screenshots by painting over them, the WiiU gamepad's touch screen was perfect for this as it was basically a tablet. But Smash bros was no art program. You only have a basic round brush in a few sizes, and everything is on the same layer. This led to me not using lineart, as if I did lineart first and then added colour, the colour would step over the lineart and look janky, and if I did colour first, well that looked good on its own so why work harder to add a lineart that now has no use! :D 2 - Drawing on paper, scanning it (or just taking a picture with my phone), and then using that scan as a sketch to re-draw it in a vector program on desktop. Sketching in vector is uncomfortable, specially with a mouse, but vectors are great for drawing with a mouse because if you mess up you can easily edit the nodes after the fact! And vectors are also ideal for lineless styles, so this also led me towards lineless art. Nowadays I have a tablet, which I use for sketching in digital raster, sometimes I use it for vexel art or for free-hand vector drawing (this is great for painting lineless foliage) but most character art I still do with the mouse. ^0^
Awesome video. Look forward to checking out your course and applying some of your tips to my games. You're still one of the most straightforward and inventive game devs on the platform.
I'm taking this approach in my game. I'm a solo dev with not much art talent, so I cut texturing out of the process completely. The game is set in a pitch black void, and you can only see using a pulse/sonar effect that washes over everything around you. It makes the art instantly cohesive despite none of the models having any textures at all. It's called It Consumes, if anyone is curious.
an aesthetic i like that would fit the idea of a art style born from necessity is the xbox 360 / transitional realism or what ever the official term for it is but i think it would translate well due to free assets being easy to find and not needing to worry about to much of the technical parts of graphics all you need to get it working well is the right post processing some good pbr materials and somewhat easy to make models
I'm currently making a game with all the art done in illustrator. Same concept as pixelart, where I'm forced into simpler shapes, which makes it easier to focus on the overall shape. Then I also add roughen-effect on basically everything, which removes the clinically clean look and makes it more dynamic. I guess it's all about keeping the focus on shape and distorting your art to hide imperfections.
Detailing is 80% of the time spent on art so a lot of time just doing the 20% and calling it a day is fine. Just do the broad strokes only you're gonna notice the little details anyway.
Reminds me of old retro games where they made sprites first and then they try their best to expand the character or style Like how Nes games only had 4 colors, what do you do? Make Mario! XD
I also share some tips for my signature simple, but good looking and cartoony art style on my UA-cam channel. I use Blender mostly. I have a tutorial as well!
Personally, my biggest advice for art is: COPY AND PASTE. I once worked on a game centered around a magical library, and I wanted a huge variety with the shelves, so it looked unique and nice and not too... same-y. So I copied and pasted an empty bookshelf I made (good) and proceeded to spend MONTHS drawing each individual book on those shelves (bad). In the end? I didn't even like how it turned out, and I was so burnt out that I ended up shelving the game. I hope to come back to it later when I'm done with my current project, because at the moment, just looking at those shelves puts me off. That's my advice. Copy and paste. Don't be afraid to just use the same asset in a different color. You don't need to make 50 different rock assets for your farm simulator, that time is better spent elsewhere, where players will actually notice it. Is having 20+ bookshelves with unique book combinations that I can mix and match cool? Sure, but the game would be just as great with just 5 shelves to mix and match. Hell, the game would likely be better because I could have spent all that time on something more important.
I don't think I have any tricks of my own, but what I already do is similar to Salman's. Even with pixel art and low res games, you can still take advantage of simple squash and stretch to give a game better bounce and feel.
I've met a good couple of people (including me) that find high-res hand drawn sprites easier to produce than pixel art, so I wouldn't necessarily call using pixel art/low poly a copout for lack of budget or art skills. It's all a matter of what you personally know how to do best if you ask me.
Great video! I like what it says about creativity and using the tools that you have to their utmost abilities. Restraints like time and skill often result in some of freshest ideas and creative choices.
Dwarf Fortress is the best example of design by necessity, everything exists because it needs to, there’s no extra fluff since that would make the already complex game run worse
What do you mean? They don't *need* to simulate hydraulic erosion, or create rich procedural board/bar games (sadly didn't make it in) or simulate every tissue layer of every finger down to the nails or all the different sections of facial hair a person might have, or describe procedural dance forms, poetry forms, song forms and instruments down to the different registers and how many octaves they cover and the timbres of each, or randomly assign sexualities to living beings including animals. It's there to make the world rich, it's there because they can, not because they have to. It is this deep richness of content defying the "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle" problem with procedurally generated content and the undiluted vision not muddied by the shaping touch of publishers that makes Dwarf Fortress (and Ultima Ratio Regum) special.
What was that one indie game in a 3D space where all of the character were 2D cel-shaded sprites? That’s probably easier to do than pixel art or fully 3D animation. I’ve never had a good experience in trying to develop a game but I’m well-versed in the 3D world so I can say for certain that there are easy and free ways to get models and animations (Sketchfab, Mixamo, etc.) but I get why devs prefer not to use someone else’s work as opposed to making it themselves.
Like me adding distorted and noisy effects to cover minor imperfections and make it seem like the quality of my lo fi music recording was intentional 😌
Hey, could you mention the Terraria Dev Donation to the Godot engine following the Unity scandal? I feel it would be great news to hear on your channel, especially with your experience and help to Godot devs
This is an amazing video. As I prepare to launch my first steam game, I've been thinking A LOT about what is "my style" & this has given me some stuff to think about 🧐
Make UI elements be thin, like 1-pixel wide. Lets you make UI that looks good very fast and in engine. For 3d, I've reduced the color scheme of my game to pure black/white/glowy white with a fullscreen shader graph. I also have an outline shader. The end result looks dramatic, you can get away without using textures for a lot of things. I chose a fullscreen shader graph because unlit shaders don't receive shadows, and lit shaders let me modify the color of the surface before lighting calculations, not after (In Unity).
My cool art trick is to hire an artist this isn't what people want to hear but if you could why not? your game will look great and you can spend more time on the game and make it better also if your game looks good you have a better chance at finding a publisher and make money
Here is my way to make character/enemy: I just barely draw the character from front (and sometimes i just draw half of it since models can be mirrored), and make a low poly model. After this, i unwrap the UV and paint the colors and details simply. I know how to use stencil painting, and use it in my old project. But making characters/enemies flat and simple way is much better for player to help distinguish what's environment and what's enemy. I didn't pay attention this at the time, until i watch a video about Tf2 art style. Here is the link if you are interested: ua-cam.com/video/RJ5goMBD6oc/v-deo.htmlsi=H9ICHmHmpyy-Nf_A
Do you teach more about textures? I'm having trouble figuring out how big to make textures and stuff. I can basically only make flat/single colour areas. I want to be able to draw like faces and details in textures but I can't figure out how to do that with 3d models textures.
As a dedicated artist, I’m wondering: is there such a thing as programming made from necessity? Like a game with a more complex look and dirt-simple code?
can u make another tutorial on godot where you tell us how to add enemies but that can shoot you and maybe add new guns? pretty please it would mean the world
Most of Adam's advice reminds me of goldsrc / early source games. For example, the lighting was baked to the lightmap texture by vrad. Resulting shadows were hard and blocky (unless you turn up the scale)
Some games do that to this day. Especially in scenes where lighting isn't dynamic except for muzzle flashes etc. It saves tons of processing power and is one of the easiest way to make VR games look incredibly nice. Think of breachers for example.
@@robrobusa indeed! A lot of games have moved away from Deferred Rendering back to using Forward Rendering with baked lighting in order to save up that VRAM for higher texture and screen resolutions.
Though personally 9/10 (or more) I'd trade less crisp image quality for reactive lighting.
@@Killicon93 Yeah totally! But honestly, It always depends on what the individual game needs - if you have a moody, creepy game you really want those dynamic light/shadow interactions (Hello Alan Wake 2). But if you you need a crisp image and stable performance, baked lighting is definitely fine. :)
i think embracing limitations is a cornerstone of art in general
so true
Nailed it. Counter-intuitively, nothing kills creativity faster than "You can do ANYTHING! What do you do?"
indeed
I like how ultrakill has a lore explanation for the low graphics, being that the machines perceive things in lower detail to run faster
That's pretty ingenius.
yeahhh sounds like i need to buy ultrakill now
@@concept5631 does that mean not genius?
@@ahmede92 Means clever, so yes
@@concept5631 oh ok, thanks for explaining
When I work on 3D games, I always present items or characters as 2D billboard sprites, similar to how the old Doom and Wolfenstein games' enemies work. For me personally, I find it WAY easier to make a sprite (whether it be pixel art or drawing) as opposed to a fully rigged 3D model, especially in a game jam or when prototyping.
There's some interesting tradeoffs between them, sprites are faster to make but you can't really rotate them to show an animation from a different angle. I think this is why so many indie devs make platformers, you never really need additional angles for a sprite, you can just flip its horizontal scale because the only directions you CAN do stuff is left or right.
@GameDevYal if you do just a billboard you are limited to 1 angles but if you do the doom technique mentioned you could create any angle you want and switch between them when the camera angle threshold is reached. I agree with @axolotgav it reduces complexity a lot but if you do something like outfits or character customization, the amount of drawings can add up fast
I want to try the technique on for a 3rd person hack and slash
@@stagfoo Well, you can split body parts and have different layers in the billboard sprite, even animate them separately, or color the separate parts, toggle different items or outfits - like you do in 2d only games. This isn't new, lots of flash games used all of these techniques.
But... you can get comfortable with modeling quick and dirty 3d shapes, compose them together and animate them crudely, with probably better results and faster than the above approach. Both have their quirks and art value.
This. If you're just doing one or two angles, it's probably faster to billboard, but if you're going to do the work to have all the different angles to try to make it look better, you're better off just going 3d.@@GameDevYal
I create 2D sprites rendering 3D models in 2D. Lolololol 😂😂😂😂
A personal favorite of mine was the pre-Jagex buyout version of Ace Of Spades. It relied on Voxlap, which displayed everything as 2D billboarding(?) voxel squares, all software rendered. No textures were used except for the GUI and the crosshair, the default "classicgen" maps used a heightmap with voxel models added as external assets for briefcases/flags and player models & weapons.
it's so funny to me how you can still play that (look up build and shoot), but there's also openspades which has a full blown 3d renderer with volumetric fog and all that jazz
it's so fucking jarring going from "this will run on the computer in your toothbrush" to modern 3d, IN THE SAME GAME
I loved this version! I miss changing the textures of my scope
What a great game, as always it getting bought out screwed it over, maybe it could've gotten close to the leagues of minecraft and terraria if it simply didnt sell out the the worst game company.
even if indie games have objectively """worse graphics""" than triple A games, when done correctly, stylized games can blow hyper-realistic games out of the water
The virgin boring hyperrealistic triple AAA vs the chad visual style oozing indie
I think it's simply a matter of longevity, too.
Picking some random examples from the video:Fez still looks great for being Fez. Goose game and Sable, too. They'll still look interesting 10 years from now.
The AAA space interests me less and less, because "epic realism" is a moving goalpost. While it might push hardware advances and show off new tech, it ages poorly. Now we're in an awkward phase past the "by-necessity" AAA graphics seen in Playstation to OG Xbox or Half-Life days that look retro, but we're in a valley of diminishing returns where the distinction is ray-tracing + 3 million polygons on screen or 8k texture maps vs only 1 million and 2k texture maps.
To a majority of human players immersed in the experience, it's technically impressive but doesn't add much anymore.
Heck, I think I'm a decent 3D artist and I struggle to tell the difference between different AA settings or anisotropic filtering. I turn off all the excessive post processing like motion blur by default, too.
"Indie style graphics" simply have an artistic timelessness, I think.
The AAA sector is constantly pushing against a wall that will eventually require quantum supercomputers and neural networks using a town's worth of electricity for asset creation......and functionally, we won't be blown away as the games themselves will still have scummier business practices to pay for all that fancy tooling.
Meanwhile us indie devs will keep making fun eye-catching stuff loaded with personality, using Blender and Krita on our gaming machines. We'll be just fine. :)
How I managed to just....stumble upon the dude that made Endoparasitic....is a marvel.
Brother. I loved that game.
Instant sub.
The most useful thing I've found myself doing visuals-wise is playing to my own strengths as a developer.
I may not be great at art, but I'm a decent programmer, so whatever flair is missing in the base assets can be made up for with all sorts of cool dynamic lighting effects and particles!
I like to use a single atlas texture of gradients, allowing me to quickly texture things, leaves lots of potential up for grabs by shaders. Our latest title Cardbob uses a single texture for majority of materials, some particle effects are an exception.
I have cool art trick.
So what i do is:
1-open blender.
2-See the interface.
3-Get overwhelmed.
4-Find the circle option.
5-Make a circle.
6-Try to sculpt it.
7-Blender crashes.
8-Repeat 3-4 times.
9-Quit.
Hope this helps anyone who struggles with art direction.
Succinct, informative, very interesting, and filled with specifics.
Great vid as always 👍
You know what they say, human innovation is born from laziness! The creativity in these artstyle workarounds alone is what makes them so special. By breaking tradition, even if as a short-cut, you are left with an artstyle to call your own!
Miz, the way you share so openly about your process, down to the tricks you use to give your games their unique aesthetic and vibe, is so generous. In what is technically a competitive field (although it feels reductive and pretty sad to frame it that way), I imagine many people want to keep their granular design choices to themselves to maintain an edge. Yet you're always out here giving it up for free.
Big ups to you, thanks for the games
This video summarized what I have been trying to study for the past year in 5 minutes
This video puts into words what were all thinking.
I have a low poly game in the works. It's pseudo PS2-style, but without the screen shader effects. Here's a couple techniques I use to create the art-style:
-Terrain is blocky, but the vertices are purposely made to not be perfectly vertical or horizontal. This gives it an angular, cartoony feel.
-Material slots that denote single colors or where tiled textures occur
-Generate UV's with Blender's "Smart UV Project"
-Set to "Shade Smooth" on almost everything
Your retro 3D art course was probably the most helpful resource for me getting started with 3D last year and that stencil painting trick looks so good so I guess I need this course too. So many great tips in this video too!
I love how many ways, tips, and tricks you can use to make art for low cost/low skill/low time applications. And notice how not a single one of them requires a certain buzz word that steals from artists! ;P (for all the haters out there)
Love the udemy course. I always have the hardest time with work not looking how I expected the first time and with iteration in art in general, you always have lots of instances where you change your mind or scrap work in your lessons and I always find it really valuable to see someone actually go through a condensed version of the real art process.
Wasn't sure how much feedback udemy gives you as a course author so wanted to come back and thank you here. :)
I don't know who this handsome Salman guy is but I get this sudden urge to throw money at the screen to him
0:59 he looks proud and high at the same time
A mindset I like when making anything but works for assets is "is it something or nothing." Like is this anything? If it is, it's good and you're done. Obviously not always applicable but can really help with productivity
i agree with everything except the lower resolution and VHS effects, i don't think it makes anything better, like yeah it covers up errors, its like putting a paper bag over your games face.
can't see the errors cause you just can't see.
just render it native, let me see the errors like i do booting up quake at modern resolutions in a source port does. those effects look worse than any errors.
or just let me turn it off or adjust it like dusk.
Same things happens with Indie music that created lofi, shoegaze, slacker rock.
Myself, I like to drown my basement vocals by running the mic through my guitar pedals.
Thank you for making the video! There also are a lot of free lowpoly and pixel art sets that could be integrated into a game as you have showed in your brilliant series "different devs make a game using the same art set"
Being Limited creates Creativity easier as example one teacher threw some coffe on my empty Canvas it really helps.
As Humans we get Overwhelmed in Life so limiting you and slowly progressing will help you more than being "Free".
Saw a video from @Impenzia where he goes around town taking pictures of random things, and just uses those as textures for stuff. Worked surprisingly well.
Thank you for showing off these art styles and tips to achieve similar look to them, I really needed that
Adore PSX style art. Great vid
The particular point about the speed and ease of making assets for a game when you simplify the art more and use more abstract art reminds me of a comment someone made about Catacylsm, Dark Days Ahead and Dwarf Fortress in that the complexity of the game and the simulation can be developed further, as you don't have to worry about the complexity of creating, rigging and animating loads of assets that then have to mesh and work together or be reworked when a system is modified, removed, or otherwise changed; a 3D model of a chain-smoking wizard riding a bicycle slicked out with armour while dual-wielding uzi's against a horde of nearby zombies would be a headache to asset, resource and make for something where you need greater graphical fidelity, but for a CDDA, it's quite doable. Love the video and the experiences of other devs is an amazing resource too ^^
Pure gold! Thanks(*bis) Mizi(*bis)!!
adversity and limitations breed creativity! I love this!
This was a great video! Getting a “Short Hike” tattoo this weekend
ahkkkk you read my mind on what I like about new indie games and their art
golden nuggets of wisdom in 5 minutes
My go to uses triplanar mapping for textures, you can skip creating UV maps entirely and still get a lot of detail with very simple shaders.
this is the best thing to figure out when you want a certain style pick what you like about other games figure out how's its done and stick with it i have a soft spot for pixel art so learning how to create some art was nice i would recommend if wanna do art early just start with simple stuff like characters and that's it no more than that or scope creepy becomes a problem
i draw art in a lower resolution with an aliased brush using my mouse, so i don’t worry about perfection and can make lots of assets quickly
UA-cam recommendation is doing great today. I get to watch some videos where it's all on my thoughts but made in videos and actually executed by people like you. I enjoyed the video!
Thomas Was Alone without the lighting effect is what a 2d game looks like when you are just building the "engine" and programing the skeleton of the game. Yes, they are a bunch of rectangles for the players, enemies, and ground. Also circles for some projectiles, and triangles for ramps in some cases. Thomas wove the shapes into the plot and amazingly got away with not have to reskin much at all.
This was a really fascinating and insightful video to watch
Amazing video, great to watch while I have my coffee. ☕😁
a really cheap way to add a sense of realism is add some physics object here and the. a swinging lamp, a moveable crate. in most engines they're both quick to make and easy on perfomance in reasonable numbers
Vector art(or just polygons) is vastly superior to pixel art especially for beginners IMO. It shares most of the benefits you talked about with drawing in shapes instead of lines and being able to omit excessive detail, but it's also non-destructive and can be composited with other common techniques easily. Pixel art is novel looking, but there's quite a few challenges unique to it like managing JAGGIES and matching scale.
Also Shaders are criminally underused despite being one of the most effective tools for adding visual flair, despite the usability improvements they've gotten in the last five years(instant previews in most engines, node graphs).
In general, I very much have enjoyed using generative tools like Blender geometry nodes and curve editors for terrain.
Also, love Adam to death. His talk(ua-cam.com/video/wb22xeh_VqM/v-deo.html) about game art changed the way I do things a lot:
- Making a full mockup of what you want things to look like in photoshop
- Don't use placeholder art(Probably covered by his advice not to spend more then an hour on any asset, but bears repeating)
- Start with art first always.
Also, vector art is very easy to scale, tween and rotate. You also get circles for free. Being able to scale things easily is going to make that last 10% of the 90% where different resolution settings are tested so much easier.
Pixel art, however... you are restricted to only scaling by integers and rotating an asset is a huge risk.
I found using the mspaint color scheme makes for a fun challenge and makes the game look strange and somewhat retro
When I first started doing digital art I had no tablet to draw on, and I wasn't willing to go through the pain of drawing with a mouse. That led me down two paths:
1 - Drawing in smash bros for wii U. That game lets you edit screenshots by painting over them, the WiiU gamepad's touch screen was perfect for this as it was basically a tablet. But Smash bros was no art program. You only have a basic round brush in a few sizes, and everything is on the same layer. This led to me not using lineart, as if I did lineart first and then added colour, the colour would step over the lineart and look janky, and if I did colour first, well that looked good on its own so why work harder to add a lineart that now has no use! :D
2 - Drawing on paper, scanning it (or just taking a picture with my phone), and then using that scan as a sketch to re-draw it in a vector program on desktop. Sketching in vector is uncomfortable, specially with a mouse, but vectors are great for drawing with a mouse because if you mess up you can easily edit the nodes after the fact! And vectors are also ideal for lineless styles, so this also led me towards lineless art.
Nowadays I have a tablet, which I use for sketching in digital raster, sometimes I use it for vexel art or for free-hand vector drawing (this is great for painting lineless foliage) but most character art I still do with the mouse. ^0^
Glad to see a new vid from you. Love your youtube style
Excellent video!
Awesome video. Look forward to checking out your course and applying some of your tips to my games. You're still one of the most straightforward and inventive game devs on the platform.
I'm taking this approach in my game. I'm a solo dev with not much art talent, so I cut texturing out of the process completely. The game is set in a pitch black void, and you can only see using a pulse/sonar effect that washes over everything around you. It makes the art instantly cohesive despite none of the models having any textures at all. It's called It Consumes, if anyone is curious.
an aesthetic i like that would fit the idea of a art style born from necessity is the xbox 360 / transitional realism or what ever the official term for it is but i think it would translate well due to free assets being easy to find and not needing to worry about to much of the technical parts of graphics all you need to get it working well is the right post processing some good pbr materials and somewhat easy to make models
Darwinia was a cool example of this as well
I'm currently making a game with all the art done in illustrator. Same concept as pixelart, where I'm forced into simpler shapes, which makes it easier to focus on the overall shape. Then I also add roughen-effect on basically everything, which removes the clinically clean look and makes it more dynamic.
I guess it's all about keeping the focus on shape and distorting your art to hide imperfections.
I've never played any of your games but I just love your 3d art style, so I bought your udemy courses hahah
Detailing is 80% of the time spent on art so a lot of time just doing the 20% and calling it a day is fine. Just do the broad strokes only you're gonna notice the little details anyway.
Reminds me of old retro games where they made sprites first and then they try their best to expand the character or style
Like how Nes games only had 4 colors, what do you do? Make Mario! XD
I like to make pixel art first, then draw it in a highest asr using the pixel art as a reference personally
I also share some tips for my signature simple, but good looking and cartoony art style on my UA-cam channel. I use Blender mostly. I have a tutorial as well!
A video by you on delivery styles born from necessity would only need to be one line, and it would be superb.
Personally, my biggest advice for art is: COPY AND PASTE.
I once worked on a game centered around a magical library, and I wanted a huge variety with the shelves, so it looked unique and nice and not too... same-y. So I copied and pasted an empty bookshelf I made (good) and proceeded to spend MONTHS drawing each individual book on those shelves (bad). In the end? I didn't even like how it turned out, and I was so burnt out that I ended up shelving the game. I hope to come back to it later when I'm done with my current project, because at the moment, just looking at those shelves puts me off.
That's my advice. Copy and paste. Don't be afraid to just use the same asset in a different color. You don't need to make 50 different rock assets for your farm simulator, that time is better spent elsewhere, where players will actually notice it. Is having 20+ bookshelves with unique book combinations that I can mix and match cool? Sure, but the game would be just as great with just 5 shelves to mix and match. Hell, the game would likely be better because I could have spent all that time on something more important.
Always love your uploads
amazing tips thanks a bunch
Great video! I need to start focusing on practing my art soon.
I don't think I have any tricks of my own, but what I already do is similar to Salman's. Even with pixel art and low res games, you can still take advantage of simple squash and stretch to give a game better bounce and feel.
I've met a good couple of people (including me) that find high-res hand drawn sprites easier to produce than pixel art, so I wouldn't necessarily call using pixel art/low poly a copout for lack of budget or art skills. It's all a matter of what you personally know how to do best if you ask me.
This man must make a tasteless steak... Because all his products have NO FAT.
This is such a helpful video. Thank you. :)
1:53 3:19 thanks for the short-n-simple tip for game design!
everyone!! wake up!! new miz upload!! awesome video format
I did your retro 3D class it was really good thanks for making it!
Great video! I like what it says about creativity and using the tools that you have to their utmost abilities. Restraints like time and skill often result in some of freshest ideas and creative choices.
I love videos like this!!! ❤
Lol the Unity debacle makes devs like you look like a genius. You were waaaaay ahead.
ah yesss
50% of the video for the video, 50% for every fucking plug known to mankind
freeze frames are cool, but (at least when pausing the tree) they can really fuck up particles and other physics related things for some reason
Dwarf Fortress is the best example of design by necessity, everything exists because it needs to, there’s no extra fluff since that would make the already complex game run worse
What do you mean? They don't *need* to simulate hydraulic erosion, or create rich procedural board/bar games (sadly didn't make it in) or simulate every tissue layer of every finger down to the nails or all the different sections of facial hair a person might have, or describe procedural dance forms, poetry forms, song forms and instruments down to the different registers and how many octaves they cover and the timbres of each, or randomly assign sexualities to living beings including animals. It's there to make the world rich, it's there because they can, not because they have to. It is this deep richness of content defying the "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle" problem with procedurally generated content and the undiluted vision not muddied by the shaping touch of publishers that makes Dwarf Fortress (and Ultima Ratio Regum) special.
Steam release has sprites now for more casual gamers
What was that one indie game in a 3D space where all of the character were 2D cel-shaded sprites? That’s probably easier to do than pixel art or fully 3D animation. I’ve never had a good experience in trying to develop a game but I’m well-versed in the 3D world so I can say for certain that there are easy and free ways to get models and animations (Sketchfab, Mixamo, etc.) but I get why devs prefer not to use someone else’s work as opposed to making it themselves.
Like me adding distorted and noisy effects to cover minor imperfections and make it seem like the quality of my lo fi music recording was intentional 😌
I can smell a video on unitys new pricing model to appear
The king is back!
Hey, could you mention the Terraria Dev Donation to the Godot engine following the Unity scandal? I feel it would be great news to hear on your channel, especially with your experience and help to Godot devs
Interesting content. Nice!
Yay, new upload
This is an amazing video. As I prepare to launch my first steam game, I've been thinking A LOT about what is "my style" & this has given me some stuff to think about 🧐
I use unlit or flat style like in Short Hike
Make UI elements be thin, like 1-pixel wide. Lets you make UI that looks good very fast and in engine. For 3d, I've reduced the color scheme of my game to pure black/white/glowy white with a fullscreen shader graph. I also have an outline shader. The end result looks dramatic, you can get away without using textures for a lot of things. I chose a fullscreen shader graph because unlit shaders don't receive shadows, and lit shaders let me modify the color of the surface before lighting calculations, not after (In Unity).
Awesome video!
My cool art trick is to hire an artist this isn't what people want to hear but if you could why not? your game will look great and you can spend more time on the game and make it better also if your game looks good you have a better chance at finding a publisher and make money
you remain the coolest
guys....we all saw Newgrounds animations with sprites, but...
Remember Smack Jeeves?
Thanks for this video!
I've lived thinking that indie games lived by the mantra of "Polygons are forbidden." Guess this isn't true.
wait you made endoparasitic?
gamer from my country played your game
Here is my way to make character/enemy:
I just barely draw the character from front (and sometimes i just draw half of it since models can be mirrored), and make a low poly model.
After this, i unwrap the UV and paint the colors and details simply. I know how to use stencil painting, and use it in my old project. But making characters/enemies flat and simple way is much better for player to help distinguish what's environment and what's enemy.
I didn't pay attention this at the time, until i watch a video about Tf2 art style.
Here is the link if you are interested: ua-cam.com/video/RJ5goMBD6oc/v-deo.htmlsi=H9ICHmHmpyy-Nf_A
Do you teach more about textures?
I'm having trouble figuring out how big to make textures and stuff. I can basically only make flat/single colour areas. I want to be able to draw like faces and details in textures but I can't figure out how to do that with 3d models textures.
As a dedicated artist, I’m wondering: is there such a thing as programming made from necessity? Like a game with a more complex look and dirt-simple code?
Another banger, thanks Miziziziziziiziziz
A wonderful video. Really inspiring, thank you for that useful content ✨
Honey, wake up, Mizizizizi uploaded a new video
can u make another tutorial on godot where you tell us how to add enemies but that can shoot you and maybe add new guns? pretty please it would mean the world