Hey all. I have been tinkering on and off with godot for a month or so now, and I've spent a decent amount of time writing shaders and checking out some of the different lighting & post-processing features the engine has to offer. It's been a lot of fun!
However, despite a lot of practice and research, I haven't really been able to create something that really feels polished. Of course, I know that it takes time and effort and iteration to make a beautiful environment, just as with any other medium. Despite knowing that, I still feel like I can't really see the path from tinkering with lightmaps to something like Hyper Demon or Heavy Bullets or even something simple like Muck.
For example, I've been trying to capture the atmosphere of some of the art from Julian Faylona, especially something like this:
I had a lot of fun learning how to model the buildings, how to set up lighting and bake lightmaps and enable post-processing effects like glow, etc, etc. But it seems like I'm always missing something that brings it from "Game engine project #2857" to a striking, or at least compelling, environment.
So, I wanted to ask y'all: how do you approach polish in your projects, visual or otherwise? Is there anything specific you focus on, or anything you've had challenges with in the past that you learned from?
Again, I'm not expecting some magic trick that will magically make my projects pristine-- like any piece of art, polish is the result of many small details coming together to form a whole. I just think some pointers on what to spend time on, things to practice, details a beginner might overlook, or resources to study would be super helpful to me and many other newer devs in honing their skills!
Thanks for reading :)
All of what you showed as reference is a very surreal art style. I don't think "just" creating some lightmap and turning on glow will do it here for you.
It's starts with a consistent and outstanding look of your 3D models. So using standard Asset packs will most probably not bring you the wanted results.
Then I think the one magic trick you are not expecting is shaders. Especially the light part in it will most probably change the appeal of your scene a lot. Standard BSDF Shader (that is used by default for every 3D objects) is designed to replicate reality. However you don't want to replicate reality, you want to replicate a painting.
This video gives a great overview of what is possible when creating your own shader: https://youtu.be/jlKNOirh66E
It uses Unity but at least in theory I think you should be able to recreate all of this in Godot.
https://godotshaders.com/ holds some impressive shaders you can use and expand on.
This makes a lot of sense, thanks for the advice! I knew I was down a rabbit hole, and this is just the direction I needed