Nextgen pixel art with real time dynamic lighting.
More of these on https://x.com/orb_3d
Just some personal experiments with pixel art and lighting.
I was curious if I could bring in a bit of what I’ve learned from 3D and AAA work to add more depth and physicality to pixel art, without losing the classic pixel perfect look. Most pixel art still uses flat lighting or blob shadows, so I started messing around with things like normal maps, PBR-style materials, and projecting pixel textures onto simple 3D meshes.
At first, I tried staying in 2D with just hand-painted normals, but ran into the usual issues: lighting limitations, fake shadows, sorting problems. Moving to 3D basically solved most of these problems. It let me use real-time lights and shadows while keeping the visuals looking clean and 2D.
It's by no means an easy process or something I'd recommend easily, it can be quite tedious (on the engine side too, not just for the look) so obviously it's not for everybody but I really like the results and it makes me motivated to explore it more, maybe for a game of my own.
normal map test on one frame + toon shader on the character for clean cut
2-tone colors and added volume.
character template made in aseprite.
Another experiment with dynamic lighting on tree canopies. The cross-shaped shadows were caused by a bug in HDRP and wouldn’t appear in URP.
testing fog
testing fog
The ambulance, rendered in-engine using only the albedo map.
An example of how the sprite sheet for the ambulance was split and reassembled in-engine. A metalness map was used solely to keep the black cutouts perfectly pitch black.
character + toon shader exploration for a cleaner shading look.
very first real time lighting test, using the bathtub from my 2D scene
no real time shadows, everything is 2D with normal maps only
2D lights. Normal map was created in zbrush in this case.
2D engine and early character blockout. light coming from the windows are faked using a "cookie texture" and area lights for the god rays.
normal maps in action
2d lights, no shadows.
an other prop where I used zbrush to create organic normal maps
2D, normal maps only
2D, normal maps only
thinking of the possibilities normal maps offer ;D
a guide I made to help me make clean normal maps. Feel free to use it if you want it.
one of my very first normal map test and trying world space isometric textures.
bonus! an old sculpt I made when I was thinking of using 3D instead of pixel art for the character. I ended up scrapping it to go full pixel art.
Older bonus!
My very first pixel art drawing—where it all started.
If you love pixel art like I do, you can follow me on Twitter, where I sometimes post side project pixel art stuff.
Thanks for making it to the end! :D