[WIP] My adventures into Low Poly Art/Game Design

So, I have finally decided to take the time to use Unity and 3d modelling software more seriously - instead of opening them and then getting overwhelmed after toying for a short time. To not return for a longer time. (I'm sure we have all been in that place one time or other... )

Decided to make one of these here 'WIP' thingy's to help the motivation. Over the coming time - I will upload my journey into model design, Texturing and breathing life into levels, art and characters alike.

So enough bore - pictures galore.

(All assets are created by myself only, except Ethan model - used courtesy of Unity Standard Assets)



I hope you enjoy this blog of sorts and I look forward to feedback in any shape or form.

Thanks Guys!

 

Looks good Good luck and keep us informed

 

Looks great! Keep it up

 

Looking good.

Have a look on youtube for "PigArt low poly", they do some really good looking low poly work using blender and put up the timelapse recordings. Good inspiration if nothing else but you might get some tips and tricks from watching the workflow.

 

Looking good

 

Thanks guys for your encouragement...

@LeftyRighty - I already checked PigArt out before, I agree some awe inspiring/motivation killing* low poly stuff.

* Delete as appropriate

@bob1234 - 2d shooter pigeon with AK is a crazy idea. Had a look through last night and enjoyed chuckling at Rambo pigeon/Expendabirds etc.

I keep thinking about a water style block, wondering if it would be better to have animated water plane or standard water style tiled blocks! Hmm, is there any advice on cartoon type water? I tried Unity's water tools yesterday - while insanely fantastic, it is also too real. Even when changing the colour of the skybox to reflect a much darker toon-ish style blue.

Had a 10hour shift today so have not got much done I'm afraid.

That said, I have a cuppa on my desk and a quiet house, this means creation time...

 

heh, thx for checking my thread out i'm very glad you enjoy my crazy game idea! hehe expendabirds, i love it!
and tbh i have no idea of how 3d stuff works in unity, so can't really give you any ideas of what to do (except i would probably draw out animated water for 2d, but thats another story xD ) but what u've done so far looks good, keep the same style

 

Quickly knocked together a little water tile as a tester. Obviously not animated...



Thoughts?

 

shouldn't it have some water showing on the sides?

 

@LeftyRighty - you are correct. I just quickly threw this tile together last night just to test the tiled texture. Currently redesigning the tile. Do you think the texture itself looks ok?

 

I think the texture is a bit to complex compared to the rest of the environment. Does not look bad, just dont fit in as good as it could do i think : )

 

@virror - Before heading out for work today I managed to finalise a nice - in my opinion art fitting - water tile. I agree with you that the other one was to 'busy' for the low poly simple look I am working towards.



Hope you all like. Don't forget to check out my Website and Facebook too

 

Evening folks,

I have completely changed the water tile again to one that fits in perfectly. I will upload a photo of this shortly.

But for now, I had a little play around tonight and knocked up a quick Low Poly bridge:





Put together two texture maps as you can see. My aim is to make several different style of bridges to be used across various levels in my future game plan!

I hope you all like the art style I am going with so far.

 

Afternoon all, [Large Update]

I am now on holiday from my job, so am able to focus a little bit more on getting my environment assets set up.

I have been working on tiles and assets, so now to show you what I have so far:



Above is a low poly Rope Bridge, this comes in around 600 odd polys. Both rope and wood texture I created myself using the 'Fibre' ability in Photoshop. Fairly please with the end result too





Above is both a low poly Rope Bridge and it's damaged version also. Both these have now been submitted to the Asset Store for approval

As stated previously, I have now changed the water tile. Below displays both the water tile and my sand tile also:



Looking for feedback on the sand. Do I keep it as is with the rock bottom half, or create one full sand tile?

Finally below is a little environment I have set up to show these in use:

 

I think the bridge may be a little bit over saturated for a general use asset, but it looks good in your environment.
The sand looks a little too overly yellow to me I think. May want to divide the yellow with some tan to soften it.

I'd say yes about keeping the rock bottom. I don't think you want to have a lot of variation on the sides of the tile, to distract from the focus which should be the top of the tile.
Oh - your water looks a lot better from the previous examples too.
Nice work!

 

Here is the current state of my tiles:



@theANMATOR2b - as you can now see I have dumbed down the Yellow for the sand. Think it is to dull and dark though?

I will be making little mock up scenes to display each tile sets in use. To start, Winter is coming:



I have made a little Lava tile and a Dungeon Floor too:



Here is my wood land assets as well:



I need to add more stuff to the Lava realm. Need to make some dead style barren trees etc.

It's a Beach Life:



I plan on making a large amount of assets for each realm/world but obviously this will be a slow process as I am still learning the ropes in the 3d World...

Hope you all like, and thanks for reading.

 

This color may represent sand a little closer.

 

@theANMATOR2b - I do agree on that colour for sand. The only thing is I did want to stick to a cartoon look for the sand colour - hence the yellow

The colour you have replaced the yellow with is what I have in mind for a desert setting later on - although it will be a bit more red-ish to produce a more barren mars type desert .

I do appreciate your feedback and input though Honest

 

haha very cool thread. Looking forward to seeing where this goes!

 

I like the look of these a lot, good work and keep it up!

 

Next up, quick and easy Low Poly Palm Tree:



This is for the beach type realm/world.

 

So, I fancied a change from bright colours today, so have been creating modular assets for futuristic settings. I will keep my words short as no one visits a blog long enough to read now... All people want is pictures

Without further delay:



Above is a floor panel with grills. The circles are going to be lights!



Above is a wall panel (the first of many). It has a data point (computer) and the device on the left I plan to turn into a glass style item with a power core style device thingy sat inside!



Above is just a plain and simple wall to help break up the repetitiveness (big word for late hour)... Has power lines running up central point of bottom section with handled style grill protection for what will be a light point.



Last image of the night is just to see how well they tile together so far.

Thanks for reading. Be sure to check out my Twitter, website and Facebook (still looking for that first FB like) =P

G'Night folks.

 

Those don't match your bright colored cartoony style at all.
Huh - oh there are words above these pictures.
Nice - would these be considered greebles?

 

Sorry - I had to google greebles... Still fairly noobish! :S

'Guts on the outside' is apparently what the Star Wars team who created them called it!

I suppose they could be used in an overlay style manner. However, I have just used them in Unity engine as my actual wall/floor sections! =P

 

Had a little mess around yesterday afternoon while feeling not sooooo great!

This little demo was knocked together to display the tileset (so far) in use:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/ncindie/roller-quest-alpha

Head on over to Kongregate to have a look if you all want and have a little play =P

Think my score was all 150 coin points in 37 seconds

 

I'm really like what you're doing, espicially the winter and tropical scenes.

With the demo however, I couldn't appreciate your work because of the camera angle. It needs to be an isometric view like in your screenshots, otherwise you can't percieve any depth.

Good luck and keep going, I'm looking forward to more of your posts.

 

Don't know if I have done this right or if it will work, first time using Dropbox to share a file on here. A little Isometric winter world with basic movement:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/3y0l4hsgcg35tg0/Winter Is Coming.html

Moving to the point. I have started creating a little world for the first part of Project Alpha (working title), and have included a very, very basic capsule with character move script so that you all can have a little scout so far. Allowing me to receive feedback for anything...

Please let me know if the file works and you are able to access the web player build.

Thanks in advance =P

 

Webplayer works, looks good.

 

Thanks, this eventually will be area_01 of the actual game I plan to slowly make. Some sort of Dungeon crawler thing be it VEEEEEEERY small, as I know these are huge projects and I don't have the time - as much as I would like!

Idea starts around being lost on a mountain - reasons unknown to me yet, just sounds good! Find a cave, that turns into a long journey to the centre of the mountain - The deeps (There will be lava =P)! Still why I don't know fully...

I will wing it while adding all the snippets of story and idea's I have to place...

I hope you all enjoy the journey with me, and tolerate the random throw in of different content like the sci fi panels above! Working 100% on same project always, can be boring - so throwing a curve ball now and again and designing something else helps me focus more!

 

Here is a picture of a little project I am working on for my sons at the moment. They have both asked for a endless running style game:




Just another example of what can be done with the tile set, which is now currently awaiting approval on the Unity Store.

 

Below is a YouTube video of what I have so far for the endless runner:

This is a little challenge for the next 7 days to get the basic play elements, score and timer operating correctly as well as the level being a true endless generated runner.

 

More progress on the endless runner. Here is a video of the current state which now has an infinite world that gets added and removed every time Player passes through a trigger function:

Currently implementing coins for a score into the level. However, having issue's with Destroy (Coins) in the void OnTriggerExit method!

Joys!! For now good night folks...

 

Well. This is awesome. Kudos on the good work. I must confess to a bit of envy, as I have been "taking this more seriously" for going on 2 years and can still barely produce anything game related and definitely no artwork whatsoever. How did you produce those tiles (i.e. which 3D modeling software)? It looks kinda like Maya, but not so sure.

Congrats on the good work, keep it going!

 

@Gloomshroud thanks for your comment. The models have all been created in Maya.

It has took me a while with mass amounts of cursing and frustration. I do have a released version of the endless runner I made called Dungeon Runner! This is on the amazon app store and on itch.io. Its early access and still gets updated and worked on every second I get. Nothing special but it's something I created with no experience and just dedication to learn.

Never understood folks when they told me YouTube was their best friend. Now I know, would never have got this far if it wasn't for YouTube and the great people that offer up tutorials on how to use Unity and 3D modeling software.

When I first started using Unity - like most - I had dreams of building the next best RPG or FPS and just kept hitting motivation killing walls. I then decided to come back to Unity and made a small but addictive 3D endless game. Not the dream game I wanted to first make, but one that has allowed me to learn the process and keep focused as well as give me some of the framework to use in other apps/games I want to move on to make.

My advice to you is keep it simple and start small. Google and YouTube everything and put what you have learned into a small project and enjoy the learning curve

Thanks again and good luck

 

I thank you for your freely given wisdom. May Fortune continue to smile upon you and yours. I will have to check out your Dungeon Runner! It looks amazing! And don't forget to keep posting your progress here! I learn from the greats, after all.

 

Wow! I can't wait to see it when it's done! Good luck

 

You can both download a Demo from my web site. There is both a PC/Mac/Linux version and an android version also... Here is the link:

http://ninjacupcakeindies.wix.com/ncindie

 

New project...



All will be revealed... Soon!