Any tips/resources on creating a polished artstyle in godot3D? - Lemmy.world

Hey all. I have been tinkering on and off with godot for a month or so now, and I’ve spent a decent amount of time writing shaders and checking out some of the different lighting & post-processing features the engine has to offer. It’s been a lot of fun! However, despite a lot of practice and research, I haven’t really been able to create something that really feels polished. Of course, I know that it takes time and effort and iteration to make a beautiful environment, just as with any other medium. Despite knowing that, I still feel like I can’t really see the path from tinkering with lightmaps to something like Hyper Demon [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1743850/HYPER_DEMON/] or Heavy Bullets [https://store.steampowered.com/app/297120/Heavy_Bullets/] or even something simple like Muck [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1625450/Muck/]. For example, I’ve been trying to capture the atmosphere of some of the art from Julian Faylona [https://www.deviantart.com/julian-faylona/gallery], especially something like this: Outer Wall [https://i.imgur.com/3jQaZip.png] I had a lot of fun learning how to model the buildings, how to set up lighting and bake lightmaps and enable post-processing effects like glow, etc, etc. But it seems like I’m always missing something that brings it from “Game engine project #2857” to a striking, or at least compelling, environment. Again, not expecting some magic trick that makes polish super easy, but I think some pointers on what to spend time on, things to practice, details a beginner might overlook, or resources to study would be super helpful to me and many others trying to learn how to polish up their visuals. Thanks for reading!