Unfortunately, as the game developed, the levels got larger, and the amount of textures in the scene started take its toll on memory consumption. Pre-rendered environment for Immuno-Defenseįor a while this appeared in the game, and gave the game a nice misty look.
I decided to render the scene with subsurface scattering with hazy lighting and then bake it onto the models. Although this produced the faceted look without requiring real time lighting, I found the range of colours I was getting to feel a bit contrived.
Firstly I tried baking lighting textures to a grayscale image, and use this to blend between colours in photoshop. I started to experiment with a few different methods. It needed to have a “faceted” looking style, with a clearly defined colour palette, but the exact treatment was left open. The game Immuno-Defense (TBA) gave me an opportunity to explore different treatments for the environment. Sometimes the art style the Lead Artist has in mind leaves open different possibilities of interpretation.
SECRETS OF GREAT ART GAME HOW TO
The right choice on how to make the asset isn’t always obvious so it’s always good to make time for experimentation.
SECRETS OF GREAT ART GAME TRIAL
I wrote a script to render each of the ants out at each of the angles, which definitely sped things up, especially since the number of angles was something that we needed to trial and error. Walking Ant Sprite Sheet, viewed from multiple angles Since the game was generally played with a fixed camera we could get the feel we wanted without the overhead of actual 3D. To solve this I went for a hybrid approach where I made the ants in 3D and rendered them into sprite sheets viewed from multiple rotations. We needed animation, and opting for a 2D ant would have felt out of place in the light baked 3D terrain. Each character would be a ‘draw call’, so even if we kept the polygons really low the game would have become unplayable as more ants entered the screen. This is a challenge I faced when working on TyrAnt an RTS (Real Time Strategy) game where you could end up with any number of ants on the screen.Īlthough we wanted the ants to have a 3D rendered look, they couldn’t be animated 3D models because things would get crazy pretty quickly. Or sometimes the style wants to look 3D but the game and platform won’t be able to handle it. Perhaps the style should look 2D but have a moving camera – so the assets will actually need to be 3D with a 2D rendered look. The game concept and initial art direction usually makes the choice between 2D or 3D clear, but sometimes it isn’t obvious.
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Very often the initial question is whether to make the assets in 2D or 3D. For each game different questions arise as to how to make the assets specific to that game. Being able to create the style we want means adapting how we make our assets, so they work within the confines of the platform and game. Choosing an approachĮach game we make here has its own technical requirements and limitations. The lead artists here always have an extremely strong intention for the look of the game, so it’s really important I get in tune with that from the outset. The final art isn’t always meant to be an exact replica of the concept art, so it’s very important to receive the vision verbally. Once the style has been approved, I sit down with the lead artist, looking through the concept art and discussing the vision of the game. I’m always sizing up the ideas to see if they’re achievable, but it’s important at this stage to give space to define something unique without fear of limitations. I usually keep an eye on concept art development from a distance.
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