scriptwelder Jan 9, 2023
Can't believe I only posted this in a pinned post without saying more about it here yet.
It's one of the coolest things I did with pixelart so far.
Despite looking 3D, it's actually a flat image with a normal-map layer added, which tells the game engine how to lit/shadow the sprite.
The normal map had to be hand-made, yes I know there are tools for that but they won't capture the true shape of the object, not at this scale and not an object this complex.
#gamedev #pixelart #indiedev
Show threadhalcy​ Jan 9, 2023
@scriptwelder oh man, handpainting normal maps is next level. Did you build yourself tooling for that?
Show threadscriptwelder 
@halcy tried tools but it only resulted in a weird car-blob relief, so: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@scriptwelder/109659336022936996
scriptwelder (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image @[email protected] I used the basic normal palette color wheel as a reference since it more or less shows the angle (imagine it's a dome viewed from top) and yeah I did it until it seemed right

Gamedev Mastodon
Jan 9, 2023 at 12:54pmWeb
Show threadhalcy​ Jan 9, 2023
@scriptwelder ah, I meant like for the drawing, with preview or whatnot. Kind of curious what the process for manually painting a normal map from scratch looks like
Show threadscriptwelder Jan 9, 2023
@halcy once i place the sprite on the stage in Unity it will update the preview live each time I save the file so it's almost live preview 😁
Show threadscriptwelder Jan 9, 2023
@halcy also it's another reason for me to make a gamedev video or two