Making advanced Pixelart in Blender [Tutorial]

[@gonzalogarciaarino4209]

I do pixel art, but it's too time consuming and for a mech game I wanna try to make a 3D model, use this technique and then maybe clean it by hand. Thanks for this awasome video, it´s exactly what I was loking for.

[@plague_doctor0237]

We're in the same boat man, how is it going with your project?

[@AstroSalamander]

My guy that sounds like such an amazing idea. Hope it goes well!

[@MrLuc420]

I'm shit at art. You've just enabled me to do so much more!

[@LarsMezaka]

Just call it style and go with it :P Im glad I could help

[@ibexl8631]

This is amazing, one of the best tutorials on this subject on KZbin!

[@JamesTDG]

Okay, that's pretty friggin epic, it is like giving PicoCAD steroids! I'll look into using that tool sometime in the future.

[@evilsdexter5261]

dude!!!! this is really really cool!!!! thank you for sharing

[@cerulean22b69]

I gave up on blender because it was so hard but now I wanna try it again. Thanks for this, it really inspires me.

[@LarsMezaka]

That is amazing :D Blender does have a very steep learning curve. And what tutorials rarely show you: even I struggle so often and so much. But if you are able to keep going, the results are worth the effort!

[@cerulean22b69]

@@LarsMezaka thank you for the encouragement :)

[@LarsMezaka]

Youre welcome :D and remember: if you need help along the way just ask or join the discord and ask people there. We dont need to reinvent the wheel all the time. We just need to talk to each other.

[@Varusal]

This is actually pretty smart. Thanks for the very helpful tutorial!

[@godirun6822]

great tutorial! You can also feed the Mix node with an RGB as color #1 and the same RGB + Contrast as color #2. By this you'll always get the same hue and you'll be able to use textures as well.

[@LarsMezaka]

True, but I highly recommend using some hue shifting! It yields much more dynamic results, even though it takes more time to set up.

[@raflexonics]

Wait, you're back! You were one of my main inspirations to learn 3D and Blender

[@LarsMezaka]

I actually never left :D Just have phases in which my work requires less/more attention

[@raflexonics]

@@LarsMezaka Yeah I get that 😭. Thanks for all the inspiration. Your videos really made a difference in me.

[@cinque3461]

Thank you !! Very helpful video !!

[@SK83RJOSH]

The phong shader on top of a cavity shader/rim light shader would get you the edge highlights for free I'm pretty sure. Another thing for things like grass would be to have a particle system that samples the surface colors for it's particle color -- then you can sculpt some hills and have particles emitted on the surface to sell grass. I also don't think you need the dithering, use normal maps + cavity and you'll probably get a lot of that for free from the lighting.

[@fthzkn]

return of the king missed your tutorials

[@LarsMezaka]

Haha! Well. Lets see what tricks i can still teach.

[@ianlange7508]

I love this video! Super well done and the end product looks very good. You mention early on that you're still trying to figure out how to add in shading dither, and I think I've figured out a good way to do it. If you put a compare node after the color ramp and select for the band of color you want to dither, you get a black and white mask that you can plug into the factor of a mix RGB node. Then, you just mix between the color ramp and a checker texture and your output will have dynamic pixel dither!

[@GrannyBender]

This is seriously impressive and useful.

[@StrikeDigital3D]

Really great tutorial! There are a lot of great tricks in here, I especially like the one about setting the sun strength really high and using the shader to rgb node!

[@LarsMezaka]

Thanks! I am currently still searching for other ways to make the shadows perfectly sharp... Id love to have more than the light/shadow separation , but thats not as easy to do.

[@StrikeDigital3D]

@@LarsMezaka That's really interesting! I just tried making a shader that emulates the kind of checker shading that you said you were working on at the start and I came up with this: imgur.com/a/kXpFKtk Its obviously not perfect, but it could definitely be improved, and I think it would be interesting to see what your thoughts on it are

[@LarsMezaka]

@@StrikeDigital3D ah thats a smart setup! I like the checker texture + dark material idea. probably gonna use something similar + cycles shadows to make them crisp... could also use a dithering matrix for interpolating 2 colors in more ways: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordered_dithering

[@StrikeDigital3D]

@@LarsMezaka Wow, I'd never heard of that! I would be interesting to see how that could be implemented in blender.

[@LarsMezaka]

@@StrikeDigital3D can probably doen with a small texture that i sample in screenspace... the cool thing is that this would allow me to have flexible step sizes for the dithering

[@PedroQueirozZen]

incredible!

[@ome.1859]

Some people are saying your pixel Art isnt beautiful, but i like it more than original Pixel Art, its like a... a genuine way to make it. This is art, and in this world you dont need much rules, its only what you like and what its feel good for you. So, continue please, your art is amazing. im started in Blender today, im very interested in this program.

[@LarsMezaka]

Thanks! Thats very nice. I do agree with some of their ideas though. But this is just a template. Everyone can customize it as they see fits :)

[@wano_ZA]

Yooo I'm going to use this, thank you soo much😩😭❤️❤️

[@Faust_YT]

Next gen pixel art.👍

[@キラキラくりくり頭]

This is awesome. Liked and subbed

[@RockmanTr]

Nice work bro!

[@brandonjacksoon]

Dude, this is really cool!!! Thak you for this tutorial! Liked and subscribed!))

[@niccruz144]

You just earned a subscriber. Thanks for this!

[@LarsMezaka]

You're welcome! I hope you found sth useful!

[@raxi9619]

looks like an axonometric drawing.. Thanks for the tutorial!

[@virtual5754]

There is one crucial thing to it. One cannot simply turn just any normal object into a good pixel art version. There has to be some sort of disproportion in it to emphasize important details which are normally small enough to act their role in low res image. Also, this direct rendering approach seems to be a little better at showing little details than Default Cube's pixelization postprocessing.

[@LarsMezaka]

Yes! I totally agree. I tried to emphasize that this technique is not built to turn any of your models into pixelart. The content needs to be crafted especially for this purpose. Choosing the right angles, proportions etc is what maked it look clean in the end.

[@alexandreancel6423]

Thank you very much, this will be really useful !

[@flower-fauna]

this was amazing, for the in between of shadows you could use a variation of default cubes comic book artstyle node based material shader i think Edit: i am talking about the "graphic novels are easy now" video, i think this technique combined with a ramp in which you basically have the options of lit, shadow, half-shadow and only the middle part basically does the thing of graphic novels are easy now could work well

[@LarsMezaka]

Yeah. I am actually working on an even better way thats using the compositor und multiple scenes for even more freedom.

[@thebigtricky9156]

very nice, I've been trying to do this for some time.

[@JulianTrebes]

Thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge!

[@alecgao3361]

Such a legend! This is awesome! You just made my day:)

[@mumble8732]

this was an amazing great video.

[@darkmantarepublic8970]

i am an apprentice game designer (coding) for a small company due to us having 4 people and our graphics designer just quit and I didn't want to dump the project (we can not afford another graphics designer) so hopefully we can get this working so we can complete the game

[@dengeki1]

Great video, but you need to really increase the audio on your vids in the future, the closer you can get to 0 db without going over would be great.

[@Anton-tp1hn]

Thanks you very much!

[@fernandogloria5637]

Thank you for this

[@noiJadisCailleach]

One of my dreams is to do animations with pixelart in a 3d space. Extensively, 3d space in a pixelart world kind of games. A bit like Octopath Traveler. 3d 2d is already a thing (Guilty Gear with fbf animations). Why not pixelart? I'm deep in my research with this and this seems to give the best result for my needs so far. Excellent work! Subbed.

[@LarsMezaka]

Yes!!! I love how well some games mix the 2D 3D stuff... my 2 big inspirations are paper mario and dont starve. I will cover a lot more info thats going to be relevant for games in my next video... probably gonna launch this weekend or the next one. Im currently researching how to export multiple maps for outlines etc, so that they can be combined in a smarter way in blender or using shaders.

[@kubikierzynka]

That is such a cool concept! I was thinking about that as well, would be awesome to work on that in like games, shows... heck even movies.

[@thesins6161]

I know I'm a little late, but I really recommand t3ssel8r channel ! He is doing a incredible 3D pixel art game, it's really cool, and he has some videos talking about it

[@noiJadisCailleach]

@@thesins6161 yes, i know t3ssel8r. TMK, he's making a tool, not a game. Sadly though, as a solo dev, development is taking a suuuuuuuuuper long time. It's the type of program I won't expect to come out for the next, at least, 3-4 years.

[@ayron419]

@@LarsMezaka paper mario was one of my favorite games back in the day because of the art and 2D/3D hybrid style. That would be awesome to see!

[@holmescooper]

Awesome work!! Thanks for this tutorial!!

[@rproctor83]

Bro, great tips, please work on getting your audio to the right levels.

[@LarsMezaka]

fair enough. and thanks :)

[@Broadsmile1987]

Filter size doesn't matter for sample size of 1, because the first sample has no random offsets, only next samples do. Instead of using Mix RGB, you could just choose those colors for swatches in the color ramp. Otherwise, you don't need to use the color ramp, which is expensive (not that it matters that much for a low resolution render, though shader compiling times can be annoying), and instead of a color ramp use a simple math:greater than or math:less than node.

[@officialmaling7577]

nice tutorial

[@mch43856]

This is amazing tyy!

[@fancyx5398]

Short question, what software did u use to display all die reference art at 1:01 ? Or is this just a picture

[@LarsMezaka]

Its called PureRef. Its free and awesome! Go give it a try :)

[@fancyx5398]

@@LarsMezaka thanks :)

[@sr2sdouble]

Ты гений . Это же и анимацию упрощает 👍

[@baonguyenanh5077]

Thank you so much ^^

[@blackbrohere]

hi Mezaka, please just wanted to know if we are allowed to use your pixel addon for commercial use and if we need to give you credit in any ways?

[@LarsMezaka]

Hey :) Feel free to use it in any way you want! You dont have to five credit and can modify it if needed.

[@nuclear_war_games]

Ive been wanting to make a game for some time that has the same visual style as some pc games from the late-90s early-2000s. games like the first 2 fallouts, age of empires etc

[@TheEarthyn]

Give the toon shader a go! Gives you similar shadows!

[@KittehBit]

Nice video, thanks :)

[@letsplaynay9936]

Thanksss 😁

[@ValeGoG]

10/10 очень круто и спасибо за урок :)

[@LarsMezaka]

пожалуйста

[@andrebentes2443]

thaaaanks!

[@ahmedyousif4782]

man you are the best

[@TheNaruciak11]

Hey! Very cool material concerning the topic of creating pixelart style effect. It sure shows well what we should generally aim for when making this kind of thing. I was actually wondering, if that effect would be possible in real time - lets say, recreating this in Unity engine. Anyone there, that used to work with it before and can spill the tea, if it contains the same or at least alternatives to blender's nodes and camera settings? Cheers and thanks for explaining and covering the topic

[@LarsMezaka]

Not sure if its possible in Blender, but definetly if you have some more low level access - e.g. in a game engine. I think there a youtube channel called T3ssel8r that shows that very well

[@gpchrosa5978]

Muchas gracias! (Thank you!)

[@leg0redd0]

Thanks!

[@aldobrandao3368]

Thanks!!

[@Alfaris_._]

Amazing.

[@chicapercebe]

cool

[@blazingblueinferno4673]

THIS IS CHEATING BUT I LIKE IT

[@lucasbastosrodrigues140]

thank you

[@bluethumbbuttoneek9465]

Would ya know how to make a post process effect in unreal engine to do this? :)

[@LarsMezaka]

Hey :) sorry for the late answer. Im not super familiar with Unreal (I do most of my work in Unity) But theres a great article explainigng some of the core concepts that might help you: medium.com/@elliotbentine/pixelizing-3d-objects-b55ec33328f1

[@QuillColor]

Could someone help me by pointing out where to get a 100% / 1:1 pixel render ? Id like a png that can be edited by hand from the effect seen in grease pencil's viewport ....

[@SukSukulent]

Why didn't you set the viewport samples to 1 too? I think you could make it so you would see everything in the viewport as you work on it.

[@LarsMezaka]

Uhhh... I dont think that changes anything. Not sure why I did that.

[@rotcivsi]

have you tried to use the solidify modifier with inverted normals for the outline? I feel like it could work

[@LarsMezaka]

That might work. Ill gibe it a try. But generally I prefer solutions that dont require object duplicates etc. That just creates a lot of friction in the process.

[@LighterthiefFO]

@@LarsMezaka you wouldn't need duplicate objects though, you can just use the modifier on your main object. You do need an outline material though. Check this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bIrVloiuo66DbLc&ab_channel=FelineEntity

[@LarsMezaka]

Ah thats pretty cool! I didnt know the solidify modifier could do that. Thanks for sharing!

[@christopherlarge288]

Great tutorial! One question I have is does anyone know why my shadows disappeared after created all the material nodes? I even went back and rewatched the nodes section a second time to make sure I didn't mess anything up and I put everything in correctly, as far as I can tell. Is it a lighting setting? I'd love some help! Thanks!

[@IndieQuest-s8q]

can this be done with an image texture

[@eneska1987]

My render turns into black after sampling complete. What should I do?

[@d_eexe]

still waiting for eastward to come out.. 🥴

[@teabagNBG]

very interessting to see how u can cheat on pixel art :D

[@abdulsabkhader]

how to stop pixel art in the blender. I want to stop pixel art from rendering in pixel, how do I shift to normal rendering

[@DogeisCut]

Any way to remove the outline jaggies?

[@LarsMezaka]

Not an easy one at least. Im still working on a different method tho

[@4rs0nn]

What software were you using for that artboard with your references? That looks very useful!

[@LarsMezaka]

Its called PureRef and its free! Go give it a try :)

[@4rs0nn]

@@LarsMezaka awesome, thanks!

[@luckysam3731]

so coooool

[@omidiartgaming4102]

Can this technique be used toward character models?

[@LarsMezaka]

Yes! I do recommend a manual paas afterwards tho... since characters are so important.

[@bill_makes_games]

Great tutorial! Do you think it is more efficient to create pixel art this way when someone is more competent in 3d than 2d drawing/pixel art? Due to my day job (mechanical engineer) i work a lot with CAD software and 3d Models

[@LarsMezaka]

Well. I dont think you can completely go past painting pixels by hand. I found this technique very useful for generating layouts/ideas that i can then polish by hand. So maybe it could help you if youre already more adjusted to thinking in 3D

[@Сицуно_Арисава]

Blender+pixelart is so difficult. What about Magika Voxel? Same 3D-pixelart but much more easier

[@LarsMezaka]

If i remember correctly the difference is that magical voxel is built for voxel art, not pixel art. This does not generate voxel art, but pixel sprites for 2D games/graphics using 3D geometry.

[@sarahange1996]

For example I work in video games and we already use a lot of software (like 7 to 10 or more in one production for one person), it's kind of easier for us to use less soft and play with the possibilities with the one that we already use :)

[@SaikingSS]

I someone new a similar tutorial but in Unity?

[@slushyie]

i cant find the shader to rgb node pls help...

[@LarsMezaka]

It is only available if you set the renderer to Eevee. I hope that was your issue.

[@thefriendlyaspie7984]

you know you could just apply a constrain track to object? right

[@CarlWidegrip]

Great video and great art, but your audio levels are whack. Perhaps raising them a bit and adding a wee bit of compression would be helpful to viewers.

[@LarsMezaka]

Will do!

[@metinsalman8645]

does this add on work on any version of blender?

[@baonguyenanh5077]

Do you know how to export the artwork in an acceptable size? Please help me

[@LarsMezaka]

I use www.getpaint.net/ for scaling it. But most image editors should work. Just resize the image and make sure to use "Closest Neighbor" for scaling.

[@baonguyenanh5077]

@@LarsMezaka Okay, thank you :') maybe i will use aseprite.

[@jerrygreenest]

Supa useful

[@corvus7535]

Would it be possible to replace the color of the outer edges?

[@vojtastruhar8950]

14:30 - wouldn't it help to have the floor as a thin box? Using a plane tends to be problematic with a lot of things like this (also collisions, etc.)

[@nonnomenes1590]

is there a way to add another color for each material?

[@LarsMezaka]

There is. I found a more powerful technique recently. Just had some problems recording the tutorial. I hope i can show it soon. Its to complicated to explain it here tho :D

[@nonnomenes1590]

@@LarsMezaka oh cool I'll watch it, but I also just added it myself, on the color ramp I just added my 3 colors, darkest on the right, and deleted the mix node, then you can add as many colours as you like. Is there any problem u can see with this method?

[@LarsMezaka]

@@nonnomenes1590 Have you tried it? In theory it shouldnt work, because the shadowmap is only back/white

[@timurf6392]

Great tutorial, but I have one question: How do I get my renders to be high - resolution? Right now they are only at 200x200..

[@LarsMezaka]

The easiest way would be to scale it up in the image editor of your choice... Photoshop etc. The alternative solution would be to use the compositor.

[@timurf6392]

@@LarsMezaka yea I also figured I could render multiple images and put them together, still thanks tho.

[@lomaximonico]

Gracias 😁☺️😁☺️😁

[@plaasboer1568]

Can you bake the pixel art on top of the 3D model as UV texture.

[@LarsMezaka]

hm... depends on what you mean. If you just wanna bake pixel textures i would recommend cycles bake function but you could use the addon to render the art and then view project it back onto the model... only works for the visible parts tho

[@JavaSqr]

У меня есть предложение - ты мог бы сделать полный обзор на аддон с пикселизацией в блендере т.к в русском ютубе на него обзора ещё не сделали, а аддон классный

[@locusruizlopez5997]

do you have more work that used this technique ? I would like to see his possibilities

[@locusruizlopez5997]

Do you think this cpuld work in a 3D game in Unity? maybe with some camera angles that change every 45º and cannot move 360º like almost all 3d games (to keep the pixel art look)

[@LarsMezaka]

@Locus Ruiz López yes! Its tricky, but it can definetly be done. There are already some DEVs with soem pretty nice results on youtube: kzbin.info/door/IjUIjWig0r5DIixQrt6A3A

[@NarekManukyan]

why the freestyle outlines works on the new project when I add it on a cube , but not on my main project which I want to use the outlines?

[@LarsMezaka]

I'm not sure. In the worst case try to copy your models over into the fresh scene. That sometimes helps

[@NarekManukyan]

@@LarsMezaka tried but no luck. I searched for pixel art shader and the setting for evee render sample 1 works just great! Thank you! the only sad part is the outline problem((

[@LarsMezaka]

Aw that sucks... Did you try the technique that I showed in the other video? You can use a depth based approach instead of the freestyle outlines using the compositor

[@NarekManukyan]

@@LarsMezaka can you link me that video please?

[@LarsMezaka]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/eajLkIempNqDnLM

[@PedroQueirozZen]

When I change shadow strength to 1k the shadow on the plane starts to disappear :/

[@Crafty420]

Did you ever figure it out? I'm having shadow problems as well

[@larsmaas07]

when i render a single image. its good but when i render it as ffmpeg it gets very low resolution. how can i fix this?

[@LarsMezaka]

you cant really... it wasnt built for this. the best way to create an animation is to render out an image sequence, scale that to the resolution you need and then compress it into your video format of choice

[@larsmaas07]

oh sorry, i already found some a solution. i rendered it with 2000x2000 and then scaled it down with compositing. also, i set the line thickness to 15

[@just_a_zombie6718]

can i ask? why did you put emmision shader?

[@LarsMezaka]

Emission shaders let you control the color without any shading interfering. I use this to simply display the color that the rest of the shader calculates.

[@schonkigplavuis8850]

how do we get this into unity?

[@jonathanmoralesgarcia48]

i'm really noob with this, but can it get imported to unity???

[@LarsMezaka]

Yes! It exports PNG images. Which you can then use in any game engine. But the algorithm itself can't be exported without effort.

[@Bitterbal05]

My render wont get pixelated.. please help

[@LarsMezaka]

Well, how does it look like? I cant help you without more information.

[@Bitterbal05]

@@LarsMezakaIt looks like what you have but with a way higher resolution.

[@LarsMezaka]

@@Bitterbal05 Maybe it is a resolution issue then? Try to set it quite low, so that it gets properly pixelated.

[@jeremmijims3853]

Try use pizalate in compose

[@chandraprana4277]

what about 2-dimensional images, can it be rendered in blender?

[@LarsMezaka]

What do you mean? It is possible to add 2D images to the scene (look for the import images as planes addon)