Texturing Styles

Let’s talk about how things are being textured! We shared the first few steps, but here’s more details from our Design Lead!

“The visual inspirations for Visceral Carnage include PS1 Silent Hill and recent horror indie games that replicate this aesthetic. However we aren’t too strict on replicating the PS1 aesthetic with the polygon limits and noticeably angular objects (e.g. think the original Tomb Raider). What we desire most are low poly objects and low resolution textures. Our game is leaning towards realism but with time restrictions and our small team, going for lower resolution textures helps minimise the time spent on detailing. 

Adobe Substance Painter is our program of choice for completing texturing as it has a decent library of brushes and materials to create realistic objects relatively quickly. To help with achieving pixelation, we are using a plugin called Pixel8r 2.5 by Action Dawg and using multiple layers with this tool to give us better control on how pixelation shows on our objects. Dithering is used to add noise to the texture base colour. Bayer is the primary dithering type we are using, but in props and objects where flat colours are prominent an additional layer with the differing type “blue noise” is added to add more variation and visual interest. Decals, which we call stamps, are used to decorate and detail our scenes which saves us time on manually painting.

With these tools, as well as some painting skills, we are working towards a game that’s somewhere between realistic and unrealistic in appearance. 

I’ve included a flowchart showcasing the transformation of an asset when the Pixel8r plugin is applied with our main dithers. This A-frame was textured by Tahlia and the blood splatter and poster were applied using some decals she had created herself!”

-  Kris (Art & Design Lead)