Low Poly 3D Graveyard Environment (WIP)(C+C)

[pistachio]

Good work so far, it looks pretty complex.

I'm thinking there are ways these textures could be optimized. Unfortunately that's something that's better off the closer you implement it at the planning stages. Hope is not lost here, there are other things you should do if you can help it.

Thoughts:

Have you nailed down the lighting? That might be the biggest issue here. Is it foggy and overcast, etc. If it is, then you could up the texture definition more because all that light is diffuse, top down, and mostly doesn't change. It does push your texture skills, even more if you are deciding what to reuse/tile and where, which you can do more of.
Added vertex lighting if it can handle that for the shadows. It looks like Phantasy Star in the link used quite a bit, and the lighting and textures are more consistent than what you have so far. Similar restrictions, but actually they are just optimizing for what your eye prioritizes.
And with this sort of vertex lighting it can still double as a night scene, without redoing every texture for lighting differences. But if you wanna redo every texture for that anyway, reach for the sky dude. It's a portfolio, more is more

Lighting ideas:



Paintover of image 6 from reply #4. Yeah, very muddy stuff, but also done with the limitations of vertex painting in mind...

Digging into (no pun) what devs did working under such insane restrictions (from today's view) can be fascinating stuff. I think it will pay off. I'd like to get into more low poly myself, so probably the above crit helps both of us. Hope that wasn't too much of a ramble and that it helps.

[heyguy]

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.

[pistachio]

Grave sites can be pretty somber so I'm guessing you're gonna use a lot of value instead of color (saturation).

Some places you can sacrifice polys and make up for it with texture contrast but only if that's a concern.

Talking a little more about the texturing problems I mentioned in my last post here.
Overriding principle in any medium basically is this: the less contrast, the less detail you can get away with. (Or if it's further away from the focal point, what viewers or players see.) To a large extent, polys and texture space are what you have the most direct control over.
It's a battle between variety and fidelity, so if you want fidelity you have to reuse textures as much as possible. Flipping, stretching, shifting, mirroring UVs, if the same two textures appear on different assets, why the hell not save draw calls and squeeze them in one map, etc.

Can't find any examples that are specifically low poly, probably because it's niche stuff. If I do I'll link them.

In the meantime try looking at actual workarounds from the era (or modern stuff that apes it), how tech artists pushed restrictions to their limit. N64, for example, had notoriously little texture memory. I'm not sure about the legality of this, but if you can find a good textured model that some guy extracted from a game (PZ0!), bust open your 3D suite and look at how the UVs relate, or even how they spread across different models if they do, that would help you big time.

Post more and good luck!

[Marscaleb]

I love this scene so much I want to marry it!
Joking aside, I love the aesthetic you are building here.  Even without lighting, it looks fantastic.
I think though that you should bring back that original fence design.  The wrought iron fence that has been broken makes the place seem so abandoned; it brings a lot of atmosphere to the scene.  Although, I do think the low brick wall looks better for a proper 3D scene, like for am action-platformer or something.  So maybe use the broken fencing somewhere else?