Art Projects
Hexagon Islands
This was an endeavor to make a unique, stylized art environment using very limited texture options, with a focus on hexagon modularity. The entire environment utilizes only two textures: a gradient map, and a “hotspot” decal overlay for edge details/highlights. Vertex colors are used to convey whether a material is reflective (red) and if it moves in the wind (green). A large “bowl” mesh is used for the sea of clouds beneath, with positional and noise calculations in the shader for generating both transparency and height offsets. Finally, fake cloud shadows are added into the lighting calculations of the models, without requiring the cost of “real” cloud shadows.
The "sea of clouds" effect that I'm doing is a transparent bowl-like mesh with noise that feeds the opacity and the height, then it just follows the player wherever they go maintaining the same height at all times. (img 4 - 5)
The only textures I'm using for the environment are this gradient atlas in the UV0s and an overlay that I've hotspotted onto most of the meshes as UV1s, giving edges more detailing. With how stylized everything is, this works for anything from leaves to rocks. (img 6)
Foliage movement and metal/shininess is handled entirely with vertex colors, so every environment prop uses the same shader. (img 7-8)
I've also gone with a subtle cloud-shadow effect. My skybox isn't casting actual shadows of course, so the lighting data I'm using has some noise in it to simulate the movement of clouds casting shadows. (img 9-10)
Low Poly Characters
Blue Kitsune? Little Guy? Yet unnamed.
I have a hobby of making and refining very low-poly characters that use simple colors or gradients. The blue kitsune character doesn't have a name yet. Their working title is “Plizard” for Polygonal Wizard (that's what they started as) or simply “little guy.” However, they've become a design I'm quite attached to, essentially becoming my mascot character, and I use them in most of my game projects as the player character. Their colors are a gradient map similar to the Hexagon Islands atlas, so changing their hair, outfit, and tail colors can be done just by offsetting the UVs.
Singleton
Singleton was the first low-poly character I made, and has been refined many times to get to their current state. Their head design was something I eventually co-opted into my logo, with some variations seen here. Since I wanted one material but only needed three different colors, Singleton’s atlas is in fact 2 by 2 pixels large.
