3D Tiles rendering

[sage crane]

I'm practicing on 3d approach of tiles making. This can be applied to a wider range of tasks, though

The goal - to make all the process more procedural - like, manual work - just to tweak some sliders.
Currently, all the textures are procedural (with generative seed).
Now, I'm implementing different render layers such as depth, shadow, normal etc
That's a bit more than necessary, but I'm wondering if it's possible to lit the 2d tiles by dynamic light sources.(in the future, i mean 🌝)
I’m inspired by this amazing work (made for Unity engine, as I understand)
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/x3xagr

Link to the Git repo of the project:
🔗https://github.com/Svi-ra/PZ-Tiles-renderer.git

[sage crane]

This is a fully procedural ♻️ corner-wear highlight setup.

It was created by baking separate UV islands 🏝️ ,
then using the Flood Fill to Corners node (by Ben Wilson)🙏 in Substance Designer,
and finally connecting it to Blender.

||This approach relies on having clean, well-laid-out UVs📓 .||

[hard vale]

I don’t think the corner wear is necessary to reproduce the vanilla objects, but if you want to make worn versions or new worn objects, it seems to give a good result. One question: are you making all the sprites in 3D?

[sage crane]

Currently it's just 2d images 128x256 (to match pz layout) rendered from 3d objects in blender.
But it could be implemented as a texture projected onto 3d object (for custom game projects)

[hard vale]

Can all the textures be merged into BaseColor? AO yes, I know how to do that, but the pink and green texture (Position?) — can it be included in BaseColor so that the darker sides show up on the texture? (I mean the 3D object in the game) Going back to the question I asked you earlier, I wanted to know if you’re making all or most objects in 3D, since I saw that you’ve done the dresser, fridge, chair... I was curious.

Well, I guess you can also blend Position with BaseColor in Photoshop, just like you can with AO.

[sage crane]

Good question, there are two maps — position and normal.
Position shows the position of each pixel of the surface in space (it can be used for effects like dirt that appears more strongly near the floor).
Normal shows the direction of each pixel of the surface — this one is more interesting, since it can be used to shade certain sides of the object as if it were lit by a light source.
Actually It's a lot of the objects in game - it will take time to recreate them all. Currently I'm just using different objects to shader testing.

[hard vale]

I’m quite interested in making all the vanilla objects in 3D. Then they can be placed in the game by having the game treat them as vehicles (trailers), but in reality they’d be containers of any type, or chairs, etc. It’s possible — many vehicles/trailers like RVs already have appliances. I know it can be done, but I still need to learn how to do some things. So if the sprites are 3D objects, you’ll be able to interact with them in a new way. That’s why what you’ve created interests me a lot, as it speeds up the texture creation process.

[sage crane]

Interesting idea, that really would add some new colors to the game.🌝

[hard vale]

What I don’t know how could be done is what you want to do — having the sprites with dynamic shadows/lights. That would really bring a very interesting new look to the game, I’d love to see it implemented.

[sage crane]

The basic idea roughly illustrated on this Unity setup
(note the shading of blocks with persistent pixelated edges and cast shadows from character and other objects)

It could also be possible to interact with the objects more naturally, since they carry 3D geometry.

[hard vale]

Very cool! I don’t know how you’ll be able to make PZ have sun and shadows like in Unity, but if you manage to do it, it will be a pleasure to help you by making the 3D objects, since there are so many.

[swift hearth]

indie stone should hire u

if u can make these things not too performance impacting

the only problem with 3d tiles is lag

would be able to animate them tho