The dead cells animation pipeline!

GIF
Pixelated model with FreeStyle on it
GIF
Pixelized 3d model (Scanlines are from mp4 to gif software)
GIF
Pixelized 3d model normals(Scanlines are from mp4 to gif software)
The normals of the Donut
Varied lighting in Godot engine
This is the effect in practice.(It's a sprite sheet) It allows for fluid animation with low computer cost ligh

Inspiration

Inspired by the world of "Dead Cells."

What it does

Our project is a technical art pipeline recreation inspired by the game "Dead Cells." For those who may not be familiar, the sole animator of "Dead Cells" pioneered an art pipeline that seamlessly transforms straightforward 3D models into pixel art, complete with normal maps. The visual effect is truly remarkable. We meticulously studied the game and delved deeply into its design to recreate this captivating effect. You can read more about it here.

This pipeline can serve as a real-time asset for game engines or simply as a captivating method to render videos.

How we built it

We used mainly Blender. It's ready to be applied to game engines. Th

Challenges we ran into

Bugs, Crashes, Blender Documentation errors, Godot Documentation errors and many more!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I am most proud of being able to stray from traditional method of how pixel art sprites in most games interact with light. Instead of requiring sprites to have a border with the alpha channel dimmed when struck by an instanced ray. Our approach not only avoids these limitations but also combines the best of both pixel art and 3D art. This fusion results in pretty artwork that's extremely easy to reanimate which is one of the biggest costs in terms of devlopment.

What we learned

To make a really easy anime 3d character you're gonna wanna use vroid (clear bone roll, Delete empty vertex groups, rename bones,mixamo create control rig). Making shaders is really hard and people who do it for a living are stupid smart!