STYLIZED ART FROM CONCEPT - PAINTERLY ENVIRONMENT

We all love a hand painted environment! Pedro Damasceno breaks down his scene he created using Unity for us! Dive right in and learn how he achieved the painterly stylised visuals for his scene, his texturing process and lots of small tips and tricks for stylised art.

Introduction

Hello everyone, my name is Pedro Damasceno. I’m a 3D Artist from Brazil, currently living in Belo Horizonte / MG. I graduated in Digital Game Design from the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais and during the course I had contact with all stages of games development; programming, game design, technical art, 3D, etc. I got into the 3D world because I love games, arts and culture. The first video game I played I think was Super Mario World (SNES) but the ones that made me think about working in the game industry were the Brazilian indie games.

Creating the Home Scene

That was the "easy" part. My project was based on the amazing Elena Ilicheva's “Home” art so I just had to reinterpret her composition in 3D.

For this, I positioned a camera with the aid of a trapeze. Soon after I started a blockout to see if the shapes would be in accordance with the concept.

In my interpretation, Elena Ilicheva chose to make a happy, fun and calm composition, showing the front of the outside of the house. For this, she used non-saturated colours, very well controlled the values to be harmonic and use sloping lines and steep curves.

The scene has no illumination because the materials are Unlit but I didn't want to lose the cast shadow information. For this, I created, with the help of Thomaz Nardelli, an Unlit shader with Cast Shadow.

Texturing Process - Painterly Style

I do my textures straight in colour. Some people prefer to start in grayscale and then add gradients, it's just a matter of preference.

With this workflow I find it easier to work out my HUE variation of objects.

Process (Hard Round Brush):

  1. Base Colour

  2. Shape

  3. Colour Variation

  4. Details

  5. Light / Shadow

  6. Colour Variation 2

To learn a little more about painting, check out Marco Bucci's channel, free and excellent quality material.

Painting Process

Painting Process

Water Shader

I am not very good with shaders, I have notions of Tech Art but to do some things I always resort to my friend Thomaz Nardelli.

  • Reflection: This is done with a Render Texture that reverses the image rendered by Camera02 and renders only what is below the WorldPos. To distort I use the Sin () function, adding Time by my Render Texture.

  • Colour variation and Depth: It's done by taking the Depth from the camera, so I'm using a flat plane underwater with a HeightMap

  • Water Fog: I'm using a sphere function (SDF) purchased here. The diameter of the sphere is given by the distance from the camera.

  • Water Foam: Made with a mask and variation using the Sin () function by summing the time by the mask.

Some sites that may help with studies:

  • https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-BuiltinFunctions.html

  • https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-Properties.html

  • https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-ShaderSemantics.html

  • https://thebookofshaders.com/

Scene Characteristics & References

Before I chose the concept, I had a huge desire to produce something that references Ghibli films. They have always created very pleasant environments to look at. The feeling I get when watching one of the studio's movies is like receiving a hug. If you haven’t watched one of their films, just run and watch one now.

It is worth mentioning that the artist Sam Gao has produced a fantastic environment based on the same theme:

Workflow

My goal with this project was to use my 3D modelling and painting skills to study shaders a bit, so I aimed to replicate the concept as faithfully as possible in my free time.

 
Process

Process

 

To produce the skybox I used Phillip Zhang's excellent tutorial .

example.jpg

As you can see this is super basic and somewhat hacky. I made an emissive shader and used the reference art as the input, then by toggling in the mesh lighting settings ‘use emissive for static lighting’ means I can treat the planes as my lights and place them to create the mood I am after.

pedro-damasceno-model-texeldensity-texture.jpg

Inspiration

Currently, I have been trying to be inspired more by things that are present in my local reality (Brazil / Minas Gerais) such as culture, gastronomy, architecture, stories.

Project CURA (https://cura.art/)

Project CURA (https://cura.art/)

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Feedback

I seek feedback mainly with my friends, I think it is very important that the person who is giving you feedback knows what you want, at what time of the walk you are at, so that he or she can give something directed. I also advise you to join a communities such as Hand Painters Guild, where people are very willing to help.

pedro-damasceno-print-03unity.jpg

Advice and Tips

Find good references, not only in the artistic way but from people, from what they are, do or like besides games.

It's a long road so it's important to be together, meet friends, people looking for something in common and help each other a lot!

Staying organised and disciplined, you need to train every day even a little but don't let work get in the way of your personal life.

Be patient.

Outro

Thank you so much for your time! I hope you have learned something, at least a bit, from the article. If you have any questions I am available through Artstation and I'm trying to be more present on Twitter.