The Art thread

[Verdite]

So I'd like to present one of my latest 'depth of field' texturing methods. This is for Moratheia version 2.0, I thought I'd save some screenshots and post them here given that this thread has been inactive for some time.

As you can see from the process images, the method involves taking a high poly render from Blender and using it as a texture in Sword of Moonlight. The map pieces (2x2) do not exceed 70 vertices each.

This method is great for Sword of Moonlight as it creates the illusion of depth while being assigned to low poly models, keeping the frame rate high even on low end machines - tried and tested!

If anyone is interested in this DoF method, post here to encourage more art related news. ‎ 

[HwitVlf]

So is it that Blender has tools to auto-reduce the polygon count while retaining the general appearance of the highpoly version? It looks absolutely amazing for 70 vertices.

[Verdite]

Yes Blender has a decimate modifier which allows you to un-subdivide meshes or simply collapse them. However, the sculpting tools do not have a well intergrated multi-res modifier yet, and this has been criticized by developers. There are workarounds, which include using the shrinkwrap modifier to fix face distortion, although time consuming compared to Zbrush. Blenders dyntopo, however, makes up for this and many artists actually stick to Blender for sculpting due to this. Like this guy.

The mesh is over 30k vertices, and the map pieces just use a rendered image of the 30k vertices model. The rendered image includes alpha (black transparency for SoM) though rendering out a texture this way can be done using a proper alpha channel for modern engines.

[HwitVlf]

Ah, very cool. I can really see myself getting onto texture creation with that method. In the past, I've used photo textures because I just wasn't able to draw 2D textures that looked authentic. But my brain works much better in 3D (the mechanical engineer in me) and I would probably love sculpting hi res stuff to use as a texture source.