Pixel Art Setup Example

February 15, 2015
1,336 Downloads
14 Likes
Blender 2.7x
Render: Blender Internal
Creator: ShaunGreiner
License: CC-BY

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Description:

This is my own way of creating pixel art out of blender. This started as an experiment to see if Blender could produce pixel art without any outside applications. The result is pretty accurate in my opion and not super difficult to setup.

This blend is specifically setup for an original gameboy palette, but this could be changed in the node editor.

Important things to note:

<ul>

<li>Low resolution size - If you want double or quadruple sized pixels just import your finished images back in to sequencer and up the scale. If you want higher resolution graphics like SNES simply up the size by squares of 2 (64, 128, 256, 512, 1024)</li>

<li>Antialiasing is off - everything blurs if you turn this feature on.</li>

<li>I'm using FreeStyle - Two line sets, one for a black outline and another for a transparent black line for interior contours. This helps make contours more visible when shading doesn't do the job.</li>

<li>Materials - Don't really matter much. Toon seems to do a good job, but most materials look good to me.</li>

<li>Compositor - This is where the palette and real retro feel comes from. I'm using one color ramp for the scene compositing. Any amount of colors can be used, but its important that blending be set to constant to preserve hard breaks in color.</li>

</ul>

pixel art retro Game GameBoy rendering nodes

Comments:

kavabanga

awesome idea! Thanks for share!

Edited February 16, 2015
ShaunGreiner

Thank you!

Written July 29, 2015
TheShadyColombian

This is great! Really useful. Do you mind if I use this for a game I'm working on?

Edited February 28, 2015
ShaunGreiner

Sure go ahead! Attribution would be nice.

Link to my site if you do: www.shaungreiner.com

Written July 29, 2015
TheShadyColombian

Also, Is there a way to use this in Cycles Render?

Edited February 28, 2015
ShaunGreiner

You might be able to using ramps and some vector math. I'll post if I do anything with that.

Written July 29, 2015
mofx

@ShaunGreiner What's the easiest way to append this to a different scene?

Edited March 09, 2015
vintar

It doesn't seems to fit in the output file (I mean, I wanted the .png in a 1024 x 768 screen, but I have to do this in photoshop to scale, because blender finish this file in the original size of the render presets) and I have not idea how to do this in blender, can anyone help?

by the way, is a great example file, greetings! :)

Edited May 07, 2015
ShaunGreiner

You can't just work at scale if you want to have a pixelated look.

Render at lets say 256 x 192 (4x smaller)

Then take the finished render back into blender. You should be able to use the compositor and the render panel in a new scene to blow it back up to 1024 x 768. If you're doing an animation you could use the video sequence editor too.

Photoshop might be easier. I'd really like to do this all in Blender, but more streamlined. I'll let you know if I make any improvements.

Written July 29, 2015
CaoMengde777

really cool! .. This is Awesome!!

Written February 29, 2016
BuckyLuis

This is a REALLY AWESOME setup!! thanks A TON for sharing it!! I was going to make a game with it, but I kinda lost interest in that idea I had... anyway, I JUST BEGAN making myself some web presence .. I posted what I did with this tool here: https://gamedevsorcery.wordpress.com/2017/02/01/animation-3dtopixelart-spritesheets/

https://gamedevsorcery.wordpress.com/

Written February 02, 2017