Tutorial for making 3D art using Unity 2D Tools

Ninjas

Hey, I have not posted in awhile, but I thought Polycounters would maybe find this interesting! Here is a breakdown of how I'm making the art assets in my game -- I think it's a pretty novel approach:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bez-9AnW3kI

Eric Chadwick

Really cool technique! Nice sleuthing, and a great way to make stylized art.

I assume you're using alpha test for most of the assets? Alpha blend would probably have tons of artifacts.

I wonder if SSAO would work with this style at all? Probably not enough geo though.

Ninjas

Eric Chadwick said:

I assume you're using alpha test for most of the assets? Alpha blend would probably have tons of artifacts.

I wonder if SSAO would work with this style at all? Probably not enough geo though.

Yup, alpha test works nice and seems to render fast.

I would like to try some SSAO, or one of the more recent volumetric lighting plug-ins. I will post up some video here if I get a chance to try that in the next couple of weeks!

indierocktopus

Cool approach! How does it affect draw calls? Does Unity batch all the sprites since they're using the same material and texture?

TooLzor

yeah that's a pretty rad way to do it! Looks pretty cool.

Ninjas

indierocktopus said:

Cool approach! How does it affect draw calls? Does Unity batch all the sprites since they're using the same material and texture?

This is not usually a problem, because the shader is pretty simple, and there is not a ton of geo -- so it seems to render pretty fast, BUT by default it does a "SetPass" for each plane. It does eventually become a problem for more complex scenes.

Here is the solution I came up with--
Use this tool to convert the sprites to meshes:
http://phoenixforgotten.com/unity-sprite-to-mesh-converter/

Put this script on the parent to combine the mesh data:
http://http//grrava.blogspot.be/2014/08/combine-meshes-in-unity.html

This reduces the SetPass calls from 20 down to 4 in a scene with just this scooter (it has a different material for the inside of the wheels)

Ninjas

modelI put this model up on Sketchfab

frame_first

wow! nice nice nice

pachermann

Hey Ninjas, thank you very much for sharing this, unfortunately these links are dead.

Can u re up em?

best,
pascal