So I misread the assignment prompt and only went off the reference photos I gathered for last assignment and started modelling right away 😅 I wanted to have a super painterly feel so I opted to model things in Blender so I had access to its procedural modelling capabilities, namely Geometry Nodes. Geometry Nodes lets me set up a node network similar to Unity’s shader graphs or Unreal Engine’s blueprints. It exposes powerful tools to generate 3D models essentially using programming techniques, letting me do things like the image below from more standard manifold 3D models.

Each object is modelled normally, then I made a modifier that instances textured planes on the surface of the objects. It’s a very flexible system that lets me really dial in the shape and variance.

Above are some paint stroke images I made. The 3D models choose a random stroke from a pool of 5 for each plane that’s been generated. I tried to keep the polygon count down to a reasonable number, and in Unity I turned on alpha clipping so that the transparent objects would be more performant. I’m not sure how heavy the scene will be in Unity once all the lighting is applied, but I’m aiming to have relatively good performance on even my laptop in the end. If it’s too heavy I may have to switch back to a more standard manifold mesh pipeline with painted textures, but we shall see.

For the kit itself, I wanted a few different versions of trees, rocks, and crystals. The smaller crystals will be hanging from the trees and the larger crystals will be the goals for the platforming challenges.

I intend to redo the rocks when I have time, right now they’re not really looking too much like rocks.