Thomas @ Stylized Station
@StylizedStation
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3D Artist with way too many followers 🎨Join our 3D Community ⬇
Toronto
Joined May 2019
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Ever wondered why you can find these awkward lines in textures, even in your favourite AAA games?
It's not because game artists are lazy; there's actually a very specific reason why this happens.
Another thick 🧵
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Lets talk about a single texture that's been a huge game changer in the world of gaming.
And the crazy part? You probably haven't even noticed it. This texture is literally EVERYWHERE. And there's something pretty special about it that's made it so popular.
Another big🧵
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Ever wondered how game artists create so many textures for massive open worlds?
How is it even possible to make so much variety so quickly?
Well, there's a technique game artists use that allows textures to build themselves.
Sounds too good to be true?
Another chunky🧵
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Have you ever wondered how game designers create such massive open worlds?
Wouldn't these environments take decades to build by hand?
Believe it or not, there's actually a way to make these worlds build themselves.
Another long 🧵
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Ever wondered how water works in video games?
As it turns out, there's a ton of smoke and mirrors in the background, without anyone ever realizing it.
---> another huge 🧵
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Ever wondered how grass is made in video games?
Making grass may seem simple, but theres actually a lof of history and technology behind this surprisingly complex topic.
Another big thread 🧵
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Ever wondered how clouds work in video games?
They may be an afterthought for gamers, but creating clouds is one of the most exciting and complex topics in game art.
We have a lot fo talk about, so lets get right into it.
Another massive 🧵
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If you’ve ever played RDR2, you probably noticed when you walk over snow, it deforms as you walk through it. And its not just your character, anything that interacts with the snow affects it.
How the f**k does it look so good?
Strap in, another massive 🧵
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If you play many video games, you may have noticed something interesting. Everything is flat.
But these flat models are all catching the light and reacting as if they have a limitless amount of polygons. So what's the reason for this, and why is it happening?
Another long 🧵
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Have you ever wondered how the grass in Ghost of Tsushima looks so good?
Wouldn't these environments take decades to build by hand?
Believe it or not, Sucker Punch Studios actually used some very creative techniques to let the grass build itself.
Another long 🧵
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How Voronoi Noise Became a Game-Changer in Video Games. Another massive thread 🧵
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Genshin Impact has some beautiful water shaders which probably took them years to develop.
So let's make it in Unreal Engine 5 in 3 minutes.
Another big 🧵
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What if I told you there was a way that games add infinite detail without using a single polygon?
You’d probably say I’m crazy.
Well, I am.
So let's embrace the madness together and learn about texture maps.
Another very long 🧵
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🌊This water-style slash
#vfx
by Chris Ryu has been on repeat on my screen all day! Super smooth animation and great timing really gives the final impact that 'OOMF'
Made with
@UnrealEngine
!
Breakdown can be found in his AS post:
#gameart
#gamedev
#ue4
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Lets take a fun look at how a SINGLE shader has had a massive influence on the gaming world, with most people probably not realizing it. And when I say this shader is used in EVERYTHING, I mean EVERYTHING, But that's because this shader has a fascinating history. Huge thread 🧵
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In 1981, Ken Perlin developed an algorithm while working on the movie Tron. He was trying to find a way to make computer-generated surfaces look more interesting.
Other people soon became interested in Ken's algorithm and started using it for all sorts of things.
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However, game designers cant add a million polygon rocks into their scene, so instead, artists will take a lower-resolution version of their model and place the higher-resolution details as a texture on top of the low-resolution model.
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My new handpainting course drops in less than 24 hours! We're so close 😭
#handpainting
#3dcoat
#substancepainter
#stylized
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If you’ve ever played any video game before, you’ve probably seen this
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While these awkward lines in a game texture looks like it might be a texture glitch, the reality of what's happening is much more interesting than that.
But to understand why this happens in games, you have to understand a concept called UV mapping.
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It's especially useful in creating effects like clouds, fire, or the surface of water in computer graphics, and for generating terrain in games.
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Perlin noise became so popular that it's been used in almost every major movie since Tron was released, and it's now a standard tool in almost every 3D software. In 1997, Ken was even awarded an Academy Award for his groundbreaking contribution the film industry.
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Star Chen might just be one of the most talented
#vfx
artists I've ever seen. Here's a quick breakdown of one of their sequences frame-by-frame so you can see exactly whats going on. Those impact frames though!! Made in
@unitygames
✨
#gamedev
#gameart
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Fluid Flux 2.0 is a very cool real-time water simulation plugin that's been blowing my mind lately. The future of water graphics is looking really interesting!
#UnrealEngine
#gamedev
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But what is Perlin Noise?
Perlin Noise is a type of gradient noise often used in computer graphics and procedural content generation to create organic, natural-looking phenomena or textures.
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HE JUST KEEPS GOING 🥊
Wan Qi blows us away with this amazing VFX attack combo.
@UnrealEngine
#vfx
#ue4
#realtimevfx
#gamedev
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Now, in video games, it would be nice to add as much detail to every model as possible -
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But a problem has already appeared - if you were to drop the texture for your rock directly onto the 3D model, the chances are good that you would see very undesirable results, since your 3d mesh has no context of where to place your 2D texture in 3D space.
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Demon Slayer - The Hinokami Chronicles has some seriously insane 3D
#VFX
work. I spent hours last night watching this sequence frame-by-frame to see how it's done. Mostly done in
@UnrealEngine
according to the game's wiki. Possible breakdown in the future?
#gamedev
#ue4
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In Minecraft, game developers used a combination of Perlin noise and procedural design to generate the entire world, including mountains, valleys, rivers, and the placement of assets like trees, rocks, and caves.
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We have no great spots to put these seams due to its irregular shape, which explains this texture glitch we see in the original example.
Its just where the artist has placed the seam in the mesh, and the texture is wrapping around itself.
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In this process, you take your three-dimensional (X, Y & Z) mesh and unwrap it to a flat two-dimensional (“U & V”) image.
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By layering in different octaves of Perlin, we can create compelling textures like wood, marble, stone and even some crazy stuff like smoke, clouds and even fire.
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SOUND ON 🔊Ever wondered how we make such pretty grass? I made a mini-tutorial showing you how to make BoTW/Genshin Impact-style grass! Made with
@UnrealEngine
and
@Blender
.
Part of my Env. Art Course. Grab it here:
#gamedev
#unrealengine
#b3d
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Because the texture isn't being "unwrapped" and then "wrapped" around the model, we don't have to worry about where to place cuts or how to hide them.
The texture just naturally flows across the surface of the model, no matter how complex or organic the shape.
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Perlin can be used to add another layer of complexity to your VFX. Adding a scrolling noise texture to your flames can make fire shimmer and distort as real flames do.
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One of the most common ways is to hide seams is to place your cuts in less visible spots on your model, like on the hard edges of your model, like our cube example.
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This layering technique is subtly used in almost every texture over your favourite games, especially procedural textures.
If you see a texture in a game with some variation, there's a GOOD chance it's using some variation of Perlin.
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This way, each polygon on your 3D model is tied to a face on the UV map, connecting the 3D realm to the 2D one.
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We can create interesting patterns by layering in Perlin noise at different strengths. These layers are called octaves, each with its unique frequency and strength.
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This may look passable on simple geometric shapes like a cube, but things get more complicated when we try to unwrap more organic shapes, like a rock.
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But here's the real game-changer: since procedural textures are generated based on the position of each point in 3D space, there are no seams!
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To prepare your model for UV unwrapping, you need to mark some seams. These seams tell your software where it can cut the mesh to flatten it into 2D space.
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BOOOOOOOM 💥 I can practically hear the FX through the screen! I love the rock simulation as well 👀
Made with 3DS, PS, & UE4.
Artist is Wan Qi, here's their AS :
#vfx
#realtimevfx
#unrealengine
#ue4
#gamedev
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By scrolling a shifting Perlin texture over a grassy landscape, we can make the grass rise and lower in a natural pattern, making it look like it's being gently blown around in the wind.
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Seams are unavoidable when UV unwrapping, but artists have a few tricks up their sleeves to hide these seams.
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So, next time you're traversing a vast landscape or examining a detailed object in a video game, take a moment to appreciate the art and technology behind what you're seeing.
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If we wanted to map a simple texture onto this cube mesh, we need to cut this mesh in a way so it lays perfectly flat in a 2d space.
Think of how you would need to cut a cardboard box to get it to lay flat on the ground, using the least amount of cuts.
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You can also hide seams in spots like the underside of the mesh, or even in natural cracks in your geometry in rarer cases.
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A height map is like a black-and-white image that tells the game engine how high or low certain terrain parts should be. The darker areas are lower, and the lighter areas are higher.
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UV mapping is also the reason you occasionally stumble across textures that look too stretched or squashed.
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The great thing about procedural textures is that they are resolution-independent and can be rendered at any size or level of detail, providing nearly unlimited detail.
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if you have to mark a seam in a very obvious spot, like a rounded rock, a very common technique to hide the seam is to literally hide the seam behind other objects in your level, using other rocks, grass or bushes.
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You can also use the paint tool inside your 3D application to paint directly over the seam in the texture.
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Now that we understand the basics, we can understand the original problem.
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Procedural texturing is a technique where textures are generated using algorithms and mathematical functions rather than being manually painted or photographed.
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Even if you have great seams, you also need to make sure that your UVs are scaled properly.
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Here's some really cool slash
#vfx
by DingPeng Xiao! I love the Animation trails on this one, very ethereal. Made in
@unitygames
#gamedev
#gameart
#realtimevfx
#unity
#ue4
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To avoid this we can use a checkerboard texture on our mesh to make sure everything is balanced, and then apply the final texture.
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Perlin noise is a great way to make terrain in video games look more natural and realistic. One way it can be used is by creating a "height map."
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Making textures and sprites from scratch for
#vfx
can be a tedious and time-consuming process.
So here's my collection of 1000+ free noise, particle & sprite textures for
#realtimevfx
artists from various sources.
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Nothing beats the world of Ghosts of Tsushima, in my opinion, when it comes to worlds that feel alive.
This game makes it feel like the wind is always present, affecting everything it touches.
But it's all a lie.
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HE JUST. KEEPS. GOING. ⚔
Happy
#vfxfriday
! Let's start off the day with this incredible
#vfx
combo by Wan Qi. Feel free to share what you're working on below! Made in
@UnrealEngine
#gameart
#realtimevfx
#ue4
#madewithunreal
#gamedev
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In a lot of scenarios, making a really obvious seam can be unavoidable.
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And in Epic’s latest showcase, the development team used procedural design and noise maps to build the entire city. Allowing for instant iteration and limitless variation in their designs.
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Oh my
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The Silent Hill series, particularly the earlier games on the PlayStation, is known for its thick, pervasive fog that blankets the town and severely limits the player’s visibility.
But this fog had an oddly specific reason for existing.
A mini 🧵
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Wind doesn’t exist in this game, at least not in the way you think. All of these effects are faked in one way or another by Perlin noise.
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We cover this topic in deeper detail in my Environment creation course, so if you want to learn how to make flowing grass like this, I’ll leave a link here for you. Its actually pretty easy.
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These cinematics from Project Overkill have no buiness being this clean
#projectoverkill
#vfx
#animation
#3dsakuga
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The blending of 2D and 3D in
#Arcane
is still blowing my mind. This shot has 3D assets, a 2D background, some 2D planes in the midground AND handpainted 2D VFX to bring it all together. Analysis of Arcane coming soon to the channel.
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With more organic shapes, lots of the triangles in your mesh may be different sizes, which will warp our texture after UV mapping is applied.
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But there's another method that's been gaining popularity in recent years, and it offers a unique solution to the issue of seams: procedural texturing.
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This grass technology is continuously evolving, with studios like Sucker Punch rendering their fields in Ghost of Tsushima by generating individual blades of grass on the GPU.
This way, each blade can have its own procedural appearances and animation. Pretty crazy stuff.
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Happy
#vfxfriday
everyone! Here's a really slick water study by Alexander youngkyu Kim. I love this
#vfx
so much - he nailed so many classic aspects of water in one effect. Made in
@unitygames
💧
#gamedev
#gameart
#unity
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Now, everything we've talked about so far is related to traditional, bitmap texturing methods, where we take a 2D image and wrap it around a 3D model.
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Who's hungry for some real-time fx??
Its
#VFXFriday
! SO here's an awesome
#vfx
sequence by Wu San showing that FX doesn't just have to be fireballs and lasers. Anyone else getting hungry?
#gamedev
#realtimevfx
#ue4
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Lets get right into it: Why is water so hard to do right? Why can’t we simulate water particles?
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And who knows? Maybe the odd texture glitch will just make you appreciate the complexity of it all even more.
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If I use a simple node setup in Unreal Engine, I can use multiple normal maps and pan the textures in opposite directions to get a basic water shader.
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- and almost every other open world game you can think of all use some variation of Perlin noise in their height maps.
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The seamless world you're exploring is the result of countless hours of work and innovation, from UV mapping to procedural texturing and beyond.
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Most modern open worlds have used some sort of noise textures to help build out their landscapes, like the rolling hills of red dead redemption 2, the hellish mountains in doom, and the scattered Greek islands of Assassin's Creed Odyssey -
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IMPACT FRAME HEAVEN💥Demon Slayer - The Hinokami Chronicles has some seriously insane 3D
#VFX
work. Here's another quick clip of Zenitsu's finisher I took apart and slowed down for you guys.
Mostly done in
@UnrealEngine
from what I understand.
#gamedev
#ue4
#realtimevfx
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So to get around this, developers creating large environments can use a ‘procedural terrain generator’.
Which is usually a node-based software that can procedurally generate massive worlds by generating a height map and then extrapolating that data into 3d meshes.
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Let's get right into it.
Large, open-world games will almost always feature these massive landscapes with mountain ranges, cliffs, and rivers.
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Water Breathing, 10th Form: Constant Flux! 🌊
Love this artsy water slash vfx by 阿拉灯神丁. Gives me big demon slayer vibes. Made with
@unitygames
!
#realtimevfx
#gameart
#gamedev
#unity
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So rather than accurately modelled liquid, most games use creative cheats where textures, VFX sprites, normal maps, and basic geometry are smashed together to give the illusion of flowing water.
Let's take a look at some of the more interesting techniques.
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