Sculpting stylized assets for mobile devices and low-end hardware can be a challenging but rewarding task. You want to create appealing and expressive models that fit your artistic vision, but also optimize them for performance and memory. In this article, you will learn some tips and tricks on how to achieve this goal using 3D software and tools.
The first step is to decide what kind of style you want to sculpt your assets in. There are many options, such as cartoon, realistic, abstract, or pixel art. Each style has its own advantages and disadvantages, depending on the level of detail, shading, and texture you need. For example, cartoon style can be easier to sculpt and more forgiving on low-end hardware, but it may require more work on the lighting and colors. Realistic style can be more immersive and detailed, but it may demand more polygons, textures, and effects. You should choose a style that suits your project's theme, genre, and target audience.
The next step is to plan your topology, which is the way you arrange the vertices, edges, and faces of your 3D model. Topology is important for sculpting, because it affects how smoothly and accurately you can deform and modify your mesh. For mobile devices and low-end hardware, you want to keep your topology as simple and efficient as possible, while still maintaining the shape and volume of your asset. You can use tools like ZBrush or Blender to create a base mesh with low resolution and good topology, and then sculpt the details on top of it. You can also use retopology tools to optimize your high-resolution mesh and reduce the polygon count.
Topology is a very crucial aspect, when creating assets for low end devices. Because topology determines the final size/memory that the asset will have. It is why most games these days will create high detailed assets by sculpting(which will take up a lot of memory) and then perform retopology of the model to make sure the topology is suitable in manner of size. Also topology is very important for animation of organic models/characters(like animals or people). With proper topology the deformation that occurs is very natural. It is why a face of a character needs to have proper topology flow for the animations to be perfect.
One of the most useful techniques for sculpting stylized assets for mobile devices and low-end hardware is to use normal maps. Normal maps are textures that store the direction of the surface normals of your model, which affect how the light reflects on it. By using normal maps, you can create the illusion of depth and detail on your model, without adding extra polygons or geometry. You can generate normal maps from your high-resolution sculpt using tools like Substance Painter or xNormal, and then apply them to your low-resolution mesh. This way, you can preserve the quality of your sculpt, while saving memory and improving performance.
Agreed! Normal maps are very important if you want to develop game assets for low-end devices. The normal map is first obtained through the process known as baking. Which is essentially copying details from a high detailed mesh to low detailed mesh. This is important because the asset can look very detailed while still being low poly model. This makes the asset take up less memory which makes it easy for the low-end device to run the game smoothly.
Another technique for sculpting stylized assets for mobile devices and low-end hardware is to simplify your materials. Materials are the properties that define how your model looks and interacts with the light, such as color, roughness, metalness, and transparency. For mobile devices and low-end hardware, you want to avoid using too many materials or complex shaders, because they can increase the rendering time and the memory usage. Instead, you can use simple materials with basic parameters, such as diffuse, specular, and emissive. You can also use texture atlases, which are single textures that contain multiple images for different parts of your model. This way, you can reduce the number of draw calls and texture switches.
This is true. For low-end devices it is important that memory is utilised as best as possible. This means that having multiple materials and multiple textures is not good for the game. This is why artists will texture the assets using stylized texturing. With this style all the texture maps are put into one texture map, so the metallness, roughness, diffuse, alpha details are all painted into one image texture. This in turn helps to conserve a lot of memory, by using only one texture map instead of five texture maps.
The final step is to test and tweak your sculpted assets for mobile devices and low-end hardware. You should always test your assets on the actual device or platform you are targeting, because different devices and platforms may have different specifications and limitations. You should also test your assets in different scenarios and environments, such as day and night, indoor and outdoor, and crowded and empty. You should check for any issues or errors, such as clipping, stretching, popping, or flickering. You should also monitor the performance and memory of your assets, such as the frame rate, the CPU and GPU usage, and the memory allocation. You should tweak your assets accordingly, by adjusting the resolution, the polygon count, the texture size, the material parameters, and the normal maps.