#raw3d — Public Fediverse posts

Now I also have my first shader that I made, which procedurally adds pixelated noise that matches the pixels of the underlying image texture.
And I can turn this noise on and off while I am texture painting in Blender and no longer need to export the texture into GIMP to see what it will look like with noise added.

I think I've spend the whole week only on learning technical solutions. Now I can finally go back to actually creating new assets!🤩

#ScreenshotSaturday #Raw3D #IridiumMoons

New Post: Making simple 2D textures from 3D models in Blender for 90s-style retro graphics.

https://iridiummoons.com/2026/06/06/making-simple-2d-textures-from-3d-models-in-blender/

#Blender #b3d #Raw3D #lowpoly #retrographics #PS1

Making 3D models to generate a 2D texture image that has the correct shadows and highlights to create the appearance of depth is working beautifully and just as I hoped it would.

Even in orthographic projection where all the objects stay in their exact x and y positions, the different shadows from moving the drain pipes further away from the wall creates enough depth to look like movement between just three frames.

#ScreenshotSaturday #Raw3D #IridiumMoons

@pythno @misjavanlaatum I think I basically got it now how to get kind of texture noise as in Quake and Silent Hill for 90s retro game graphics in #Blender.

The key to pixelation in procedural textures are the three nodes on the right. Not 100% sure how they work, but they take the UV map of the object and split it into distinct squares. Feed that as the vector into all your texture nodes, and they all come out with the same pixelation.

#Raw3D #3Dmodeling #PS1graphics #retrographics

Old Quake and PS1 textures often tend to have a very high graininess to them even when they are of a fairly uniform overall color.

I am trying to recreate this kind of noise in Blender, but mixing a base color or texture with a noise node doesn't look anything like this.

Anyone an idea how to generate this kind of noise with material nodes?

#Raw3D #Blender #b3d

Some more tests with creating low-resolution 2D textures from 3D models.

The gaps between the wall panels are 2cm, 45° bevels, and the doorframe protrudes 8cm from the wall. The light source is a Sun with Strength with an angular diameter (size) of 100° for soft shadows.

Light coming in at steeper angles make the shadows more pronounced, but also reduces the brightness because its spread out over a larger area.

I feel 45° is a good middle ground. Exactly as intuition says.😄

#Raw3D

#Raw3D

I now understand why people say they like to put a PS1 texture distortion shader into their low texture resolution games even though there's no technical need for it.

It hides that your UV mapping is distorted like shit. 😆

#Raw3D

The modular assembly system for metal bunkers is working beautifully and just as intended.

But doing corners is turning out to be a problem. Not a Blender problem. But rather an engineering problem how to put the beams together in a way that would hold up the weight of the floor plating above.

Things completely irrelevant for a #Raw3D game where things can just float in the air, but I want to do this right!

This datapad I quickly put together based on the design style idea I had is perfectly functional. But also kind of boring.

But does it need to be anything more?

The game goes for an 80s design aesthetic and will have 90s 3D graphics. Among all the other low-polygon objects, putting any more detail on this might result in an inconsistent overall look. It's already high detail because players will hold it in their hands and up to their face.

#IridiumMoons #Raw3D

I made this quick flower pot so I have at least something I got done for my game today. And going with mid/late-90s retro graphics, I've been setting the roughness of all surfaces to maximum, as that was all they had.

On a glazed ceramics flower pot, having some shininess on it would fit, and I kind of like it. But it also really draws attention to the low polygon count.

Would it look strange or feel out of place?

#IridiumMoons #gamedev #Raw3D

So this is my very sad, very shitty first #ScreenshotSaturday for #IridiumMoons.

It's a test image for creating PS1/Quake style #Raw3D textures by making a 3D model of a wall section in Blender, lighting it, and then rendering it in orthographic projection to a .png image.

The test here is to see how small a rivet in a wall panel can be to still be visible as such when rendered at 64 pixels per meter. (Cylinder radius 1 cm to to 6 cm.)

400% magnification for browser viewing.

I quite like the noise you can create in GIMP with the Plasma render desaturated to greyscale a lot more than the Solid Noise.

The problem is that it creates noise that is mostly white with little black, which brightens up the colors below significantly.

If I can figure out how to get the layer to have equal amounts of white and black, I think this would work well for my wall textures.

#Raw3D

New Site Post: Graphics Style References

https://iridiummoons.com/2026/05/14/visual-style-references/

A collection of reference footage from other games that represent the overall graphics style (though not visual design aesthetic) I am aspiring to with Iridium Moons.

#IridiumMoons #hobbydev #Raw3D

Pixel art indie games have been around for quite some time now and have well established themselves as a style that will almost certainly stick around for our lifetime. It's just a very practical solution to get appealing 2D graphics with very limited resources.

Low-fidelity 3D graphics are fairly new as a common thing, though. Dusk kicked in the door 8 years ago, but the style has regained widespread popularity only in the last 5 years. I think most is yet to come here.

#indiedev #Raw3D

Though I actually haven't given this much thought yet at all.

Metal Gear Solid seems like a really nice #Raw3D look with relatively realistic human proportions andhead textures that suggest just enough of a face to let the brain fill in the details. (Drawing faces is always the worst.)

But the options are endless and this is a decisions that probably should be thought well through.
Any other suggestions for realistic looking low-polygon human styles from games?

Playing around with #Blockbench for an hour, it's certainly different from what I was starting to get used to with Blender, and I don't like different.

But this really seems like it's what I should have been learning to use from the start. For my goals this seems perfect, with just the functions that I need.

#Raw3D

For 9 out of 10 people, #Blockbench is probably not an alternative to #Blender. But for low fidelity, PS1/Quake style #Raw3D models, this not just looks like it could do the job, it actually might even be considerably more accessible. It does modeling, texturing, rigging, and animating for Godot, Unity, and Unreal Engine.
Despite the popularity with block games, it also does cylinders and spheres.

https://www.blockbench.net/gallery

I don't know about the AI code contribution policy, though.

I was wondering if 16 different wall crack decals would be enough, or if I should make another set of 16 more.

I managed to access the decal texture files of Half-Life, and that game's number of different wall cracks is a total of 2.

Just 2.

It's always the same two cracks and nobody ever notices. 😅

#gamedev #Raw3D

Panzer Dragoon II was released 30 years ago on 22nd March 1996 in Japan for the Saturn.

#1996InVideoGames #90sGames #VideoGameHistory #retrogames #retrogaming #PanzerDragoon #Raw3D #SegaSaturn #Sega

Randomly wondering how many new games use PS1/Quake style Raw3D graphics and don't aim for a horror aesthetic. 🤔

Surely one or two must exist. 😅

#Raw3D #retrogames

@Nodbrim So pretty... 🥹

#Raw3D

I just noticed that 1920x1080 can not only be neatly divided by 2, but also by 3.

640x360 would be a great resolution for retro graphics GUIs that can be easily scaled up for 720p, 1080p, and 4k while maintaining the original look and crispness.

#Raw3D

The revival period of "late 90s" 3D graphics in indie games is now going for longer than these graphics were actually used in mainstream PC games three decades ago. (On PS1 it was a bit longer, of course.)

There had been less than 5 years between Descent and Quake III, and it's now been a similar time since Cruelty Squad and Northern Journey were released.
(Dusk is 7 years old, but it took a while for other developers to pick up the style as well.)

#Raw3D #90sGames

Randomly thinking how a Cyberpunk 2077 demake in id Tech 2 engine would probably look amazing.

#Raw3D

I do remember how back in 1998, people were pretty much in agreement that Unreal had better looking graphics than Half-Life. (Even though everyone I knew thought that Half-Life is the much better game.)
But hey, it's Unreal Engine 1! Of course it looks great.

But now that I've seen the graphics of Blood II for the first time, and looked again at Sin, I think that apparently Half-Life had pretty crude graphics when it was released.

#Raw3D #retrogaming #HalfLife

I'm a big fan of the low fidelity 3D graphics of the late 90s, but even back in the day, I found the 3D graphics of games just a few years older very offputting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lePSeVyd5As

#retrogaming #Raw3D

I am studying the visual style of 3D games from the late 90s, and one thing that I am noticing as a big jump from "PS1 era graphics" to "PS2 era graphics" is that the edges between polygons mostly disappear. It's most visible in character heads and clothing. A pants leg appears like a single continuous surface.

What's the new technology that became common around 2000 that enables this?

#gamedev #retrogaming #Raw3D #gameengine #graphics

My #hobbydev goal for #IridiumMoons this year is not even to make a first prototype in Godot, but simply acquiring the skills in Blender to make all my own model and texture assets in the #Raw3D style I am aiming for. And maybe also doing animations and visual effects.

If making an actual playable game were to elude me, I could at least enjoy making screenshots and trailers for fake games as a hobby. 😅

Took me already two weeks to get back on that Blender horse again, though.

@carlosefr Slander! Most 90s graphics age amazingly well! 😆
#Raw3D

The GZDoom/Build Engine/PSX pixel style is one of the strangest art movements I've ever come into contact with, and I love it.

I don't even play boomer shooters (which I think the large majority of these games are), but I love this style of visual expression. In a way, it's Impressionist painting in a new medium, combined with unconventional grotesque subjects.

I wonder what trained art historians would say about, who don't dismiss it as trivial.

#retrogaming #Raw3D #art #design