Thanks so much for the great feedback pistachio! That folder (and especially Phantasy Star Zero) is definitely an inspiration for me! PSZ definitely looks more cohesive than mine. I feel they have a greater variety in colors which is something I need to add to my scene somehow. I think I've read a lot of DS scenes have a poly limit of 3500. Right now I'm 7785 so I need to optimize a lot to maybe make things look more like a DS game.

So I think I want to have two different scenes, a day and night scene. One will be day, either foggy/overcast or clear. The other will be night time. Same textures, maybe a different skybox, maybe less fog, drastic change in lighting, etc. I'm debating between foggy or clear because even though I like the foggy atmosphere, I don't really like how the fog looks in Maya. I think it might be more nicer to see a painted skybox with a background.

I'm not sure about upping the resolution. If I do, it could lose the PSX/DS chunkyness to the pixels. I actually painted the terrain textures at a higher res and scaled them larger in Maya. Here's a pic with the grass/dirt at the correct UV scale and how I currently have it. I feel it loses the "implied" look a lot of pixel art stuff has.




I thought you brought up another texture-related issue, how the resolution of the grass sprites and the lantern looked odd compared to everything else. Maybe you edited it. Anyway, I feel like grass, lantern, bushes and other small props look strange. Maybe they need AA or they need to be a higher resolution. Maybe something else? I do think changing the resolution of the terrain makes the grass, bushes, leaves, and other small nature props mesh better. What does everyone think about the small grass sprites littered through the scene?

Still working and hope to update this in a few days.