Improvement thread: cute 3D art & textures

tinyworlds

I try to work on a 3D piece and/or texture every other day to improve. Hope you enjoy c:



Why this thread
I've been working on personal games and uni projects for about 10 years know, yet I still feel like a jack of all trades, master of none. I'm currently finishing up a degree in Digital Games with focus on gameart. Troughout my studies I discovered that I really like the more technical/ analytical approach to gameart of 3D and Substance texturing, so I want to try and get really good at this one thing.
With my current portfolio I don't think I could land an internship or work opportunity during/after uni, so I want to try to get the best I can be while I still have the freedom and resources of uni.

The Plan
Right now I'm doing some smaller, quick portfolio pieces to warm up to 3D and to be able to dabble in a lot of styles. However my final plan is to have some industry-standard, polished pieces to show in my portfolio.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/tinyruin
Artstation:  https://www.artstation.com/tinyworlds

tinyworlds

Here is a little experiment from yesterday .. where will this lead you?


How it's done:

• box with color of the background, with hole cut where the door is
• unlit shading, so there is no visible difference to background
• particle system to distribute some stars in the box 
• bloom & DOF to make stars pretty
  

tinyworlds

Froggo World
This is a little fanart of this awesome webcomic: https://twitter.com/TheTimeCowboy/status/1025019348933472256
Done similarily as the portal yesterday. And the outlines  are done with the inverted normals trick.

tinyworlds

Today I did a little fanart of this beautiful moth art by Elaine Lee.

I traced the wings in Inkscape (vector graphics) and imported the resulting svg into Blender (Blender creates paths/Bezier curves out of that). Then I turned it into geometry and textured the moth in Substance Painter. For Sketchfab I also added some simple dust particles which are planes with a simple texture on them (looking back they probably have more vertices then necessary). They were distributed with the particle system in blender. I used the plane as emitter and changed the gravity to go upwards.


Sketchfab: https://skfb.ly/6AHtn 

Lucas Annunziata

Coooool! I love the doorway portals!

tinyworlds

Thanks @Lucas Annunziata ! Someone on Discord re-created the same effect in Unity using multiple cameras (in case you want to give it a try ^^).

tinyworlds

This is a homage to those old LCD handheld games and the accessible game making tool Bitsy: https://ledoux.itch.io/bitsy
Bitsy is a very accessible game making tool that cuts away all the crap and makes you focus on story and the game.
It has 8x8 tiles, so I thought it would be a great fit for a more "retro" aesthetic : )
While this is right now only a model, it would also be possible to have actual Bitsy games running on it using an Unity plugin : )


Modeled with Blender and textured with Substance Painter. Shots are from Sketchfab right now, I might also try out some Marmorset renders of this in the future.

tinyworlds

Here is the updated version of my little pocket console! Thanks to Candle for letting me use his pixelart, check out his games: https://candle.itch.io/


Sketchfab: https://skfb.ly/6AIyQ
Feedback welcome : )

Carabiner

I like your aesthetic! Cool stuff.

littleclaude

Great thread, have you seen - Protanopia

tinyworlds

@littleclaude Yes I've seen it, maybe it has been an unconscious inspiration for the frogs : )
@Carabiner Thank you : )

tinyworlds

Some random models/textures to get back into the swing of things. Wanted to learn more about foliage and also experiment with style. Not on my usual quality level, but it helped get back on track and learn new stuff.

The wheat was procedurally generated with the free tool Arbaro. It's kind of like Speed Tree and allows you to create & export trees and other plants. The wheat is one of their demo objects : ) I exported a highpoly (can also create lowpoly with it, but in my case I wanted highpoly) and then used Substance Designer to bake the model onto some flat planes and to texture the result.



I also made this quick tree with Arbaro and created a swirly tree texture for it.


Lastly, here is a little art test, as I want to build a little greenhouse to learn the modular environment prop workflow.

tinyworlds

Little 3D scene based on an artwork by https://heskhwis.net/

Alex_J

Love the swirly tree texture.

tinyworlds

Thanks @BIGTIMEMASTER !
Today I made a little honey package design thingie. Had a lot of fun making this.
The font I used is Merriweather and part of the free Google Fonts collection: https://fonts.google.com/

EDIT: might not post sth for some time, as my laptop seems to be partly broken
EDIT 2: Well the RAM was just loose, easy fix. Back on track I guess

tinyworlds

Back to it!! I made a little Autumn boi cause today is the start of Autumn.

I experimented with using a photo of liquid paint to add additional texture. Also used a particle system to distribute the leaves in Blender and also some modifiers to alter their shape (simple deform, wave modifier).
Also, I'm on Instagram now & post my cute gameart and nature photos there: https://www.instagram.com/tinyworlds_rick/

tinyworlds

I started working on my Bachelor thesis project (might start a new thread for it). It's a game about wildflower meadows, here are some first art tests.

I want to translate an "illustratory" style to 3D, inspired by children's book etc. My game is for primary and pre-school children
The clover is pretty simple. I think what's interesting is maybe that the stem is done with Bezier curves and then converted to a mesh. Saved loads of time Not sure if it's much polys, but as you can look at them very close (game plays in plant pot) I think it's very ok.

I also made a plant pot after looking at different shapes of cute plant pots on Etsy.

This is the color palette I used: https://colorhunt.co/palette/18933 The site is really useful if you look for good color palettes for your art Mostly aimed at design, but also applicable for gameart.

tinyworlds

I created this little acorn to see if I could do a simple daily warmup model within my current time budget.


This took me 30min for modeling & UV and about 50min for texturing and final touches.
It's a bit long, but I might be able to do it for some time. Else it might also make sense to only do the model or split modeling & texturing into 2 days.

Generally I really like the idea to make some art/ look at inspiring art before starting the "real deal". To warm up the skills.

Color palette used: https://colorhunt.co/palette/193
Sketchfab link: https://sketchfab.com/models/965ed0e274a74e9e8094974ed5320810

EDIT: Another one! Some fanart in the style of the game Button city

Sketchfab link: https://sketchfab.com/models/34b5c7cd4aaa4a9ba742cc054ce8a69a