Pixel Art (Style) Rendering In Blender

In this tutorial we are going to look at recreating the classic pixel art look using Blender. This tutorial covers modelling a very simple space ship, colouring it using vertex painting, rendering in cycles, given it the hand drawn look using FreeStyle, applying a toon shader the using the compositor to give it a pixelated look.

Dont worry if you didnt keep up, there is a handy text version available here:

[Brian-vssd]

Another excellent video Mike. This would be an excellent way to create graphics to use in a game jam to get professional results very quickly.

[hiiambarney]

Mike mate, I miss these! How about an update for 2.8?

[FlashPaperGrind]

For those that stumble onto this video and would like to know a very easy way to scale faces on the mirror plane (seen when he tries to scale the tail) - just turn "clipping" on in the mirror modifier.

[thiagor]

Great video and more Freestyle, please!

[ghostwarrior-nixb]

5:51 the word you are looking for is tail fin

[tinymountain]

Why doesn't the mirroring apply when you are extruding on the z-axis around 3:00 into the video?

[lokalnyork]

Oh man, havent done pixel art in Blender for a while, here are my old attempts from over a year ago, maybe they will help You upgrade/modify Your workflow.

I can't help to notice You have some issues with colors getting "mixed". I've tried to make some sort of index color node for Blender, but I think putting render into something that have inbuilt IP capabilities (say, Aseprite or Gimp/photoshop.) would do the trick too. I did it with render (clay matcap + AO)

[jasonargo]

Might I ask what processing power your computer has? My 16GB RAM is a little slower than yours, but only a little.

[ABMultimediaDesigner]

how can you do pixel art without those black lines/borders?

[uzimonkey]

I came up with a different method that produces some very interesting results.


The blender internal renderer is probably better for pixel art since it is at its heart a rasterizer, you can very accurately rasterize very aliased and accurate polygons, where the cycles renderer is by definition very noisy and smooth.

[alsigerpro]

Can u make a character or enviroment with art style similar to aragami or necropolis?plz

[sabbaseleftheriadis]

That's hardly pixel-art, this is comic style. For pixel-art looks go check PC games from 90'. This shit can't be reproduced by Blender, ever.

[ActionGamerAaron]

Pixel art is not a style on it's own!! More technically this technique is called 'rotoscoping' and is technically pixel art as it's low resolution, but if you want real traditional pixel art, there's no shortcut like this. There is much to learn and you've gotta draw it yourself.