3DRealtime Rendering of 3d Meshes as Pixel-Art

Howard Day

Working on custom shaders and rendering in unity to make 3d objects render like classic pixel art. Some success so far! The web build is here: http://www.hedfiles.net/PixelShader/PixelShader.html




With extra smooth 8X AA:

Animations:





I'm going to put together a tutorial and release the source when it's closer to done-ish.
Enjoy!

ST-One

Nice!

TALON_UK

Awesome.

:thumb:

Nathan Rubric

Impressive... most impressive!

evil_genius_180

This is awesome. I love old pixel art.

BlueNeumann

Oh man! Can't wait to see some of the awesome thngs on this board get pixellated and made into fake video games... or even better, REAl video games.

Knight26

very nice

fractalsponge

Awesome.

Samurai

Brilliant. Also strangely hypnotic. o_O

Armondikov

Jesus, Howard! That's, like... an actual game-changer for doing pixel art in Unity!

Howard Day

Thanks, guys!
Armondikov: Maybe. There's still work to be done to make it awesome in most situations.

Okay, took the opportunity to put together a little kitbashed space fighter from bits. It looks pretty neat! First is in the native, intentional palette, the second is indexed to the Raptor Call of the Shadows palette.


..and a angled verticle SHMUP version!



Enjoy!

evil_genius_180

Dude, that's awesome. I like the design. Do you have any plans to make a retro style space game with this stuff? That would be killer. I have an Android game that has this style of artwork, but the characters are more cartoon style (big heads and eyes, etc.)

Armondikov

evil_genius_180 wrote: »

Do you have any plans to make a retro style space game with this stuff? That would be killer.

Well, since you mentioned it: http://www.wingsofstnazaire.com

IRML

this is brilliant

http://www.hedfiles.net/PixelShader/pixart_05.gif

with that one a giveaway is the shadow cast by the mech onto the girl, it has a higher temporal resolution than the 'sprite' itself has

I wonder if dynamic shadows should even be allowed? self shadows sure, as that's how the sprite would have been rendered, but casting shadows from one to the other? maybe not? perhaps an average value of the shadow over the whole sprite would make it look like it's being faked more?

Chris2005

Amazing! That's all I can say.

Howard Day

evil: Nah, these are just tests. I'm going to release them - so if someone else wants to make a SHMUP, they're welcome to try.

IRML: Hmm, interesting thought - but unity cant' do that kind of single object shadow maps. The difference in update frequency is something that can be controlled - and is in the latest builds!

Chris2005: Thanks!

Okay. In new news... I've been an absolute idiot. The Indexing shader that I wrote wasn't quite doing what I thought it was. As a result...the indexed colors were being smoothly interpolated. This is, safe to say, not the intended behavior. I've since fixed it, and now, the indexed results are absolutely perfect. Kills me that I missed something this stupid. Ugh. UGH.
Here's a look at the new output:




So that's settled, and a weight off my mind. The next thing on my ToFIX list was the AA. It was very blurry - and just..looked artificial, and not pixeled at all. So, I figured out a method around that. The Scene is rendered with AA at 3x the final screen resolution.. then Nearest Neighbor scaled to the final desired resolution. Here's the image with no AA:

And with the new AA!

I'm stoked. It looks much improved to me!
Here are some more shots - pay attention to the LUT cube in the upper left.






I'd love to hear any and all feed back and thoughts you guys have.


Enjoy!

evil_genius_180

Yep, that definitely looks more like indexed color, with the harder "edges" between colors. It's funny, I used to hate that in games and other programs, now it's cool and retro. The new AA is a definite improvement in making it look more retro too. :thumb: The lines really were too anti-aliased before, they look more correct now.

TALON_UK

Much better, much retro coolness.

:thumb:

Armondikov

Just as with Wings, it's not just retro, it's a better version of retro.

Howard Day

MADE A DRONE.

Thems some thin lines, son! the object line width is totally controlable - you use the vertex alpha value to multiply the width.

I wasn't a huge fan of the existing glow, and was looking for a way to fix it. Given some suggestion on another forum - I went with the hybrid approach:


And the skin shader + enhanced facial features:


Enjoy!

evil_genius_180

The drone is cool. I love the new glows, they're very '80s and '90s looking. :thumb: The previous ones weren't bad or anything, they just looked more modern.

Howard Day

What I've been playing with so far... the start of explosion VFX.
A test for the debris flame...

And with bigger explosion blasts...



Enjoy, and keep the crits coming!

evil_genius_180

The chick in her underwear needs to be careful. She looks dangerously close to being roasted.

Looking great. In another circumstance, I'd comment on how cartoony it looks. But, that's the goal here, isn't it?

Howard Day

Done. Got unity particle effects playing at locked framerates.


Easy to set the frame rate now... Works on any and all particle systems.

evil_genius_180

Oh yeah, that brings me back. Now I'm in the mood to play an old side scroller from the '80s or '90s. Fortunately, I keep some of those around here for when I get that urge.

Armondikov

Since you're going from 3D models to a 2D-effect in the rendering, how well does it work when you have backgrounds undergoing the same treatment? Do you envision having to use different settings in order to make the pseudo-sprites stand out as they would on old SNES games? Or do you think that dropping a fairly normal scene and switching the shaders to "ON" will be sufficient?

Howard Day

Armondikov: Yes, good question! I don't know, as of yet - I'm still having to make the background art to test with. I suspect with the controls I have in place, it will look awesome.


Okay! So, I re-wrote the dithering to work on the material, not as an overlay. It works a TON better. It's now controlled via vertex colors, which means variable dithering is possible! It's pretty nice, and adds a huge amount of control to the visual result. I also set the shadow density to 50%, and toned the ambient values down as well.


Enjoy!

evil_genius_180

I don't know how that chick can be so cool about being roasted alive.

Seriously, great stuff. :thumb:

Howard Day

Got dithered Alpha working! Boy, do I like this effect. It's much better than just straight alpha.

Enjoy!

evil_genius_180

I like it too. It makes it look even closer to those old video game graphics.

TALON_UK

This thing just looks even more awesome with each update, excellent work.

:thumb:


Flaming chick just too disturbing for anyone to mention? Cracking looking effect though.

:devil: