A Little Update On the Art Style of Our Houses

Hi everyone! This is Chloé, your friendly neighbour, bringing you today’s Patreon post!

As some of you may remember, I was working on a house to test improvements to the art style for the houses, furniture and general environments. (Here is the link for those who need a refresher: https://www.patreon.com/posts/creating-new-and-58897848)

Right now, Léa and I are focussing on improving the art style for the game’s vegetation; we won’t be showing you all the exterior of the house just yet until that’s done. You’ll have to wait a bit longer!

Today, I will be showing a sneak peek of the interior of the house, the creative process behind it and the improvement of the art style. 

The sketch for the first floor of the house was previously showcased on social media.

An Iterative Process

We had to test a lot of things when it came to revising the art style for the houses and furniture items –different modelling styles, texture styles, shaders, colour palettes, you name it.

As an example, the trickiest to figure out was the texture style. I talked about the goals for our art style more in-depth in a previous Patreon post, but to put it simply, the texture style has to be artsy but has to make the materials identifiable and accurately depicted. It was a long process of trial and error to find the style and subtleties we wanted.

For this wooden floor, we did multiple versions. The ones above are samples that didn’t make it to the second phase of the tests. They just didn’t feel right to us!

Once we found one that felt right, it still had it go through many iterations so we could get the subtleties right.

All the variants tested for this style of rendering for this wooden floor.

More of a Feel for the Materials

One of our goals was to make the materials identifiable. As such, we have been testing and implementing a few things. For one, we are using metallic: it helps to make metal surfaces stand out.

On the left, a material without any metallic applied; on the right, the same material with metallic. You can feel the difference.

We also decided to add some more depth to the surface’s reflectivity. Now, you can see the light interacting on the surface (it’s fun to move the camera and see the light shift!)

A fridge with a highly reflective surface. Look at that shine! (If you are on mobile, the GIF may not show up for you!)

Tiles with a more subtle reflection. Sometimes, less is more. (If you are on mobile, the GIF may not show up for you!)

Where The Interior is At Now, and The Next Steps For It

Throughout the past months, the style has undergone a lot of changes. I’ve seen this first floor so many times in so many styles by now! We decided to go for a softer approach with painterly details in the end.

Here is where we currently are at for it, with the art style we decided to pursue:

Interior of the Render Target house, fully modelled. The objects in orange don’t have any texture at the moment. Can you spot the changes in terms of furniture and colour from the original sketch?

We have recently hired Javiera as an environment art intern. She is currently hard at work on adding clutter items to fill up the space. I also wanted to show off the nice sketches that she did for how we want the space to be filled!

Javiera’s sketches (with a bit of censorship by yours truly, eheh). With the different clutter items, we will get a livelier space and a feel for who lives there.

We are hard at work improving our art style of the houses, furniture and general environments; what you saw is a work in progress. We are still testing a variety of things, like lighting, vegetation, food, etc! We are looking forward to showing you this house when it is complete. You will, of course, be able to find the furniture and items from the house in the game to use in your builds!

That is all from me today! Have a great weekend everyone (*´∀`*)

Chloé, signing out!

Edit - January 19, 2023: This Patreon post is now public, feel free to share it!