Trying to set a graphics mode for my project. The big question I have is - if I want to go low poly - what are some good resources to make low poly games look good?
Does anyone have any good links or tips?
As with any specific art style, the secret to having a good looking game is… have consistent and good looking art.
There aren’t really any “tips” beyond that.
Also as a personal point of pedantry, most “low poly” games have much, much higher poly counts than games that aren’t “low poly”. The term gets used both when referring to trying to replicate the look of old consoles / arcade games which actually were low poly, and games that simply use limited or no texturing and rely on flat colored and often faceted rendering to invoke the feeling of those old games.
A great example of the later would be something like Hot Shots Racing, which invokes the feeling of something like Virtua Racer, but is in reality using more polygons in each car model than the entire track would have used in the games it’s invoking the look of.
Hot Shots Racing
Virtua Racing (Arcade version from 1992)
The recent re-release of Virtua Racer on ths Switch uses the same geometry as the original game’s release, but pushes the vision range to much further than the original game had, which is more in line with how people remember the game looking vs how it actually looked. The original Virtual Racing has at most around 12,000 triangles on screen at any moment, total. Hot Shots Racing is easily using 20k+ for each car. Those palm trees might have more than 12k triangles each.
Yeah - for me when I say “low poly game” I’m referring to the look of something like Synty assets. They have a distinct style that trends to “low poly” as a label.
they seem to use faceted rendering on form with environment lighting or matcap techniques. It may be PBR or hybrid use.
https://learn.unity.com/tutorial/creating-physically-based-materials-unity-2019-3
matcap stuff -
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/free-matcap-shaders-8221
you can blend a bunch of these concepts into fun results through shaders for certain lighting elements to be accentuated.
The artistic direction is unique but CG artists will understand how to re-create much of it. Abstract form with hyper shape-language; contrast / harmony in terms of artistic anatomy.
after that = rendering techniques
Illustrative texturing/rendering
Light baking when applicable including Ambient occlusion
Global illumination of various capabilities depending on what the hardware can run.
Just remember, when you say “low poly, like Synty”, it takes more now-a-days (engine-wise) to create that look and feel, then it did back in the old days, and your now using a more advanced engine to create such a project. Some great advice has been givin, and to be honest, Unity is probably your best engine choice to deliver that.
Just research on low poly development with Unity (tutorials, info, workflows), and you should have no problem. Biggest things is optimization, poly and tri counts…