Recreating / getting close to the art style of Life Is Strange

Unity Engine
1

I am interested in achieving a similar look to the first season of Life Is Strange.

The game looks so incredibly beautiful and pleasing to the eyes, and I would love for more experienced 3D artists, texture artist and render specialists to correct my wrong observations and pick up on things i have missed.

If you are unfamiliar with the art style have a look here for some in-game shots:

http://deadendthrills.com/gallery/?gid=130

3D Models:

  • Dunno the name for it but semi-realistic?

Would love it if you guys have any Artstation links with artist who do similar work.

Textures:

  • All hand painted, no PBR
  • No depth/bump map ?
  • Slight normals?

Post-processing:

  • some heavy chromatic aberration
  • depth of field (mostly in sequences)
  • maybe a little bit of bloom
  • light-shafts, not sure what the effect is called and if that is even part of post-processing

As far as the textures go I’ve been wondering if there is a workflow with filters in Photoshop that could get me 70% there or maybe if some easier workflow in substance painter/designer. There seems to me some simplicity to those beautifully hand painted textures, so achieving something similar is not out of the realm of possibility for me.

Post-processing should probably be all possible with what is available in the Unity post-processing stack, without having to code anything myself.

Any tips and observations from more experienced content creations would be much appreciated!

2

You should look for the afro samourai’s talk in gdc vault, will show you some post process

Then you can download model in rip on the internet for study, it’s pbr

1 Like
3

did you mean this power point presentation ?
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1709/Style-in-Rendering-The-History (Afro Samurai, 114mb)

there is a lot of good info, some of it is exactly what i was looking for, thanks a lot

for anybody else interested:
this one about the walking dead is not as in depth but has some good tips:
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1018172/The-Walking-Dead-Crafting-a

4

I think you misunderstand what PBR is. PBR is “Physically Based Rendering”, which just means it’s trying to model the way lighting interacts with surfaces more realistically. That can be done with hand painted textures or photo reference. Dontnod (the developer of Life is Strange) was one of the earliest to adopt PBR for real time rendering with Remember Me. Life is Strange is likely using a similar PBR renderer, it’s really just the textures and the rest of the art they’re using.

2 Likes
5

It’s PBR, but with very painterly albedo textures. Normal mapping is used all over. Heavy use of baked GI lightmapping.

6

Guess i did, i always think of realistic looking metals and other surfaces whenever i read PBR…
Learned something new :slight_smile: