Guidelines for matching the game's art style?

[HURTZCO]

There's already a post out there on how to create the sprites so that they look, from a setup perspective, like they belong in the game.

But is there guidelines for making the objects themselves fit, aesthetically, with the game? Material setups? Levels of noise in textures? General workflow tips?

[Impatient]

There's already a post out there on how to create the sprites ...

can you post a link to the mentioned post?

[eradicator]

But is there guidelines for making the objects themselves fit, aesthetically, with the game? Material setups? Levels of noise in textures? General workflow tips?

Looking at the most new-graphics intensive/impressive mods i know - Angel, Py, Yuoki, Krastorio, Industrial Revolution - i've never seen even one single modded machine that looked "vanilla style" to me. Some get close, most don't even try and do their own style instead. So i kinda doubt there's a guide on how to do it. Given how much work/time goes into vanilla graphics i assume that it's simply too much work for an individual modder - especially considering how many different buildings some of these mods have.

[HURTZCO]

There's already a post out there on how to create the sprites ...

can you post a link to the mentioned post?

Here you go: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=5336

There's already a post out there on how to create the sprites so that they look, from a setup perspective, like they belong in the game.

But is there guidelines for making the objects themselves fit, aesthetically, with the game? Material setups? Levels of noise in textures? General workflow tips?

That sums it up. I thought most of these mods fit in quite well, but I could see at the same time how they don't. Thanks!

[mrudat]

One of the FFFs suggested that the graphics are first rendered, and then possibly distressed, and then for icons, the individual mipmaps tweaked to look good.

The impression I get is that Factorio buildings tend to be weathered, while Angel's, and even more so Pyanodan's, are shiny and new, as if they've just come off a trade show floor.

IR feels closer, but even that is cleaner than the vanilla buildings; I suspect it's more the overall color of the early buildings being more brown on the whole than anything else.

I think a big part of it is that good looking dirt takes time to do.

I imagine that it's possible to get the computer to apply a coating of rust, grime and dirt, but that seems non-trivial, and possibly the easiest thing is to have your base building, possibly with parametric textures, and then hand-paint a layer of grime.

[Deadlock989]

IR feels closer, but even that is cleaner than the vanilla buildings; I suspect it's more the overall color of the early buildings being more brown on the whole than anything else.

The models for the base game sprites most likely use hand-made UV-mapped textures, which is a skill I lack. All of IR's textures were procedurally generated - some of them had 40-50 nodes in Blender. The best I could do was try and match the palettes.

Most sprites I've seen in other mods lack noise and especially lack weathering. Objects that are scratched and pitted tend not to be equally scratched and pitted everywhere. Corners, edges and things that stick out get more scratches and pits, but tend to be cleaner because the dirt is worn off - in Blender you can approximate this procedurally with the "pointiness" attribute of the mesh geometry, which works best if you subdivide the faces a lot. Meanwhile pits, nooks and crannies (negative "pointiness") build up more dirt.

For example, the orange rust and "corner dirt" on these pipes was made with "pointiness grunge":

pipes.jpg (414.91 KiB) Viewed 3726 times