Square pixels on textures

retrevolt

Hi!
I'm trying to create models with "pixel art textures" but I am stuck on getting the pixels on the mesh to stay square.
The below model is only a test!
I have tried relaxing my textures to get all square checker maps but this doesn't help with the pixels.
I have tried making the UV layout itself square but that really didn't help
And that's pretty much where my ideas stop... Anyone with experience with this able to help me out?

Thanks in advance!

Model (with problem area):

UV layout:

Texture map:

Steppenwolf

You are trying to fit a square peg through a round hole. Either go way down with your polies and texture resolution for that oldschool look or take a look at some texture sheets from the times when 256 for a character was acceptable. For example: https://tcrf.net/Daikatana_(Windows)/Graphics

retrevolt

@Steppenwolf Thank you for the swift answer! I had a feeling I was going way out of bounds on the poly count. I'll try to reduce them.

Steppenwolf

That isn't gonna fix your uv issues tho. You still need some smoothing, gradients and fake lighting in the textures at that resolution. If you want squarish pixel art ala minecraft then you have to model in squares i'm afraid.

retrevolt

@Steppenwolf The above textures are reaaaaally basic and I'll keep working on them. I just need less (or at best no) warping of the pixels. At the moment I'm starting to think about other ways to handle this issue, for my project. But if I can get as close as possible to what I want then I can make a well grounded decision on which way to go from here. Either that's enough or I need to go another route
I have noticed that as long as I have a texture I can adjust the UV manually to get better results but that's an enormous amount of work...
Thank you again for your help!