I’m jealous that there are so many amazing 3D assets on the store that not only provide you with amazing prefabs to use, but set up spectacular example scenes. Meanwhile, nearly every 2D asset is below average quality.
Why is that, and where can I find high quality 2D asset packs?
Bumpity
If you do fantasy or scifi then yes, there is alot of great 3D content.
2d assets (I am speaking mainly from character modeler perspective) offer very little in terms of customisation. Unlike 3d, they arent modular, if you have a 2d animated character, you can only use this character in its default state. You cannot easily add more animations, or change the equipment, since those elements are inseparable in case of 2d. I can only imagine the color palette customisation, if the artist thought of it beforehand. It is possible to create flat polygonal puppets driven by a skeleton like a 3d model, but it will be too restrictive in terms of animation (rotations only around one axis or it will break). So I think that by its nature, 2d art is too narrowly specialized and even really good asset is unlikely to sell well, so no one bothers to put up anything other than basic low res pixel art.
Possible workarounds? In case of environmental props, perhaps, you can find some handpainted- looking 3d models and render them into sprites with transparent background. In case of characters, it cannot be done so easily. Pre-rendered 3d animation will have a distinct look which wont suit everyone.
When you say, most are below average quality, and you want high quality, what kind of high quality 2d assets are you looking for? And what is it that you are looking for, in a high quality asset?
I’ve been working on some 2D pixel asset sets for platformers. The first set, I’m not sure if it would meet your standard of ‘high-quality’ but what it is looking to be is a consistent set of art with a VERY large set of tiles, characters, and animations.
Solid enough to be in a releasable game, but also great for prototyping.
This was specifically to address the problem I so often run in to when using 2D art from the store: missing animations and limited sets of characters. You end up having to fit your game around the available animations, and at that point its better to just create the art or hire someone.
The second set I’m working on is another pixel art set, but (to me at least) the quality bar is quite high. Personality filled characters with fluid animations. The challenge here is that this is not very generic, its not going to fit a lot of games.
For this I’ve just included a color replacement shader. Works well for pixel art at least.
In theory, even high res art can be made color customisable but it will require adding some kind of material ID mask to each frame, so different parts of object or character could be recolored from a shader.
