I like the flat shader look, I always wanted to make a game that looked like Starfox on Snes but more modern, and prettier. I came across this article. Go Beyond Retro Pixel Art With Flat Shaded 3D in Unity | Envato Tuts+ . It seems like a real good way to create flat shaded games. But I have some concerns. I’m no artist and I don’t want to model AND uv map a model. I could do the modeling part but I really hate uvwing and texturing.
1 : Does anyone know any software where I can import my low poly model then just paint on each polygon with a ms paint fill like feature? 1 poly 1 flat color. A compromise for me I guess would be I could, uvw auto uwrap but in a way that every polygon is a separate square. Then aline it with my color pallet on the texture. But How many colors should I throw in a texture that gets loaded for every single model?
2 : How could I make it look prettier. The article talks about AO baking but that requires uv mapping. Could there be a simpler way to automate this process with maybe unity’s beast lightmapper and skip having to make a uv map. Or bake from some other way without a uvw map? If I do auto uv unwrap by each poly being separate then AO bake wouldn’t there be seams on every polygon?
3: Another solution I thought of was just using a fake Ambient Occlusion matcap. Does anyone know any free ones?
Thanks, anyone who has done flat shaded games and made them pretty I’d like to hear from you and how you did it.
I don’t know much about the workflow part of it but I agree I like the flat-shaded look also. Usually it’s just vertex colors. You could use a vertex painting tool from the asset store? Usually to make it flat, all 3 corners of each triangle have the same color.
Pretty-ing it up… even though its low-res and flat shaded with no textures, you can still do all the lighting/shadows whizz bang, give is some global illumination, soft shadows, hdr, image-based lighting, ambient occlusion, etc.
I am trying to automate this and do it as fast as possible. Is there a built in dual diffuse overlay shader in unity or a free one somewhere, where I can bake a AO map in I guess blender and just multiply it in unity as a second texture over the diffuse texture? I’m mainly using sketchup models that have flat colors painted on each poly at the moment. I’d just like to easily overlay a AO map on them. Trying to think of the best way to do it. I know sketchup is very bad on draw calls and not optimized but it will suffice for prototyping and still having a flat shaded modern look.
imaginaryhuman - Can you link me some good reading on graphics in unity free? I really don’t know much about graphics techniques. I just recently found out this flat shader style was called flat shaded like a few days ago. I always wondered what the 3d games art style on super nintendo was called.