Since our group has been leaning into some painterly illustrative style, I wanted to go ahead and look at how to approach this form of stylisation, So I went and looked at some videos.
This is a really interesting video I came across, showing the process of modelling in Hades. I think seeing how each layer of illustration builds up to the final product helps to understand how to break up the workflow we would need to try create something similar. I really am just fascinated by the work that went into this game so its amazing to watch in general. I think my group will look to create a toned down version of this for our models. It is also interesting to see how the rigs work before I have learnt about them.
This is a really good tutorial, I liked the demonstration of using hand painted techniques as well as using generated textures and applying colour theory to make them pop. I think this is a really good method at least for our environment textures!
This tutorial was a lot more visual, showing how to blend colours and hand painting an entire model. I’m not sure if this is what we are going for, with the lineless blocky nature, but it still gives off a nice impression and we could use some techniques from it. I think this works well to explain the idea behind digitally painting and translating that to a model well.
I found this video very helpful, it creates a really nice graphic look that a couple of my group members were interested in accomplishing. This is also all done in Blender so we can show each other what hex codes and the effect it has, as well has having some integration with the light within the scene which could be nice for each of us to be able to quickly edit and adjust the colours.
This video had some good insight into the stylistic side of this particular art style and how to replicate it for 3D props. This uses a similar effect to the toon cel shaded, but demonstrates how to control this to not be so cartoony. as well as describing the post production effects you can look at to maximise the old 90’s anime style.
PRACTICE
Taking a look at our references I went ahead and used what I learnt in these tutorials to start experimenting with texture and style. So I went ahead and made some simple props and unwrapped them in blender, before exporting these as an .FBX to bring into substance.
The first style I tried was the method in the Oddish video, using a combination of light generators and clouds to get a painterly effect and using colour theory to avoid pure blacks and whites. I went and made a smart matierial with the set up from the bottle and borught this over to the quick Dungeon I modelled too, tinting it to change the colour.
This was what it looked like when i brought it bake into Blender.
And this is a slight variation of the colour, making it a bit more muted and shadowed, I think I like this appearance compared to the first one.
Using the smart material I made from the bottle I went ahead and worked on the dungeon mock up. This time I added some more cloud generators, to break up the ground, as well as hand painting in some light and shadow on both the elements.
Bringing this back into Blender and adding some point lights really sets the mood of the piece, I really like how this turned out actually.
I wanted to try and recreate these planes with drawings on them, adding to the illustrative tone. So I did some research on how to apply opacity in substance and Blender and quickly painted out some rocks.
I like how these turned out, but I’m not sure if they fit with the overall design that the group is wanting to create. I know how to achieve this effect if that is what the group wants to accomplish this.
The second style I wanted to try out was the Cel shaded toon style in Blender.
I just used the same practice models from the other texture practice, this gives a very graphic look and calls a lot of attention to things, so it may be more useful for objects that we want the audience to focus on, like our characters and and important props. I think a smaller thickness on the lines would work a lot better, I’m not entirely a fan of this very intense cel shading so I will try to achieve more colours to get a better gradient.
For the pass of this on the Dungeon experiment, I went and looked up gradients on Coolors (https://coolors.co/palettes/trending) and picked one I liked. I put these colours into the ColourRamp node using the Hex colours.
Then I went ahead and added the Blocky lines with the Emission shader node and used a grease pencil object to add some more precise linework. The only downside from this texture method is that we can’t get our nice coloured lighting that we wanted.
The last video that I used to experiment with style was experimenting with the 90s Anime style. Unfortunately I found a lot of issue trying out these methods, since he didn’t explain what he did and I had to take a closer look at the nodes he had and adjust them myself. I also found that the Linework that he had in his video, generated from Freestyle just didn’t work in my file, despite attempts at troubleshooting (https://artisticrender.com/a-guide-to-blender-freestyle-rendering-with-eevee-and-cycles/). I went ahead and sent screenshots from the video to my group, because I think that style would work well, mixing the illustrative and cel shaded style.
Despite my issues, I was introduced to other nodes in the shader editor, and how to use basic limited colours for effect, as well as learning about some compositing nodes and the effects they could have to further our effect. I initially tried to have this gradient and texturing to the dungeon area, but the z axis gradient wasn’t working and I set up another version of the bottle to work on instead, and it worked ok once I tweaked with the camera settings.
I learnt more about the Compositing Options in Blender, and I definately think my groups style could benefit from some Glare/Bloom and some sharpening to achieve the nice lighting and linework.
From these practices I now understand the importance of leaving enough time for texturing to be done, and leave time in case changes needed to be made or adjusted so that we can all make things that look similar. I found researching different ways to texture and different styles quite fun and I can see how I can apply this knowledge to my own personal projects.