Insights into other crafts

There is a lot to learn from 3D model packs! I used one for my shader experiments, and turns out there are a lot of clever tricks going on in there.

Let me tell you all about them!

Resources⌗

As you may know from my October Update, I am playing with shaders.

These are not the actual models I used for most part of my process, but I wanted to save you from looking at all the uglyness I had to.

However, I did not make those models!

They are Tiny Treats’ Pretty Park set, which is free and super super cute. For a small amount, you can support the creator and get the .blend files! ❤

The Diorama⌗

This is just an unlit shader that is passing the colours as-is:

#version 330

out vec4 finalColor;
in vec2 uv;      

uniform sampler2D diffuseMap;
uniform vec4 diffuseColor;

void main() 
{
    vec4 texel = texture(diffuseMap, uv);
    finalColor = texel * diffuseColor;
}

If you pay close attention to the image, however, you will see there is some shading going on. That is what sells the whole look, and the reason this set works so well: baked-in ambient occlusion.

Tiny Treats achieves it in the smartest way possible: except for the grass, which has its own texture, everything else has their UVs mapped to a single texture of gradients:

Bear in mind this is not the actual texture in the pack! I have created a new one. If you want the pack’s, you will have to go to the creator’s page. Remember, it’s free!

This pack of gradients enables Tiny Treats to keep colours coherent inside a palette of her choosing, all while lifting loads of work off her back, as she can just focus on modelling. It is also very lightweight; one texture for N models. Very, very smart.

Might seem silly, but I love getting these little insights into the crafts of other people!

And it’s a nice trick to keep in mind if you want to develop your own sets 😉