3d pixel style

[supernormal]

Hello!

I was hoping to maybe pick up some tips or tricks on how to achieve a 3d pixel art style using wings in a repeatable way. I've seen tutorials for this style, but most depend on grid snapping and setting really specific grid sizes. I've read in other threads wings units have no correlation to pixels or other "real world" units so I was just curious if there would be any other "best practices" to achieve this look. Ive been able to get pretty close using things like snap image, turning vertex colors to materials, or just manually lining up uv maps. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

Below I've linked a reference image and a videos showing how someone achieves this using Maya.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/53/1e/d9/...c0d16b.gif
https://youtu.be/dKEbhmeSuHA

[micheus]

Hi supernormal, welcome.

In order to see your pixelated texture correctly on screen, first you will need to disable the filtering option: View->Show->Filter Textures
This will primarily fix the blurred image you may be seeing.

Because Wings3D unit (WU) has correlation with "nothing", you can scale it at any app for what have exported it.

The .gif you linked basically shows objects created in multiple of a unit and than the texture was "fitted" on it.
When most the shapes has flat faces you can select these set of faces and mark then for cut in the UV Segmentation window and then use the Unfold->Projection Normal.
Also, in this case, the Snap Image will probably save you some time unwrapping the object - just remember to use the orthographic view and align the camera with each axis you are "painting".

The video really make use of the snap option - not available on Wings3D. Depending on how are you planning your model you can use the Absolute command to place an object in a specific coordinate - it works for vertex mode too, so you need to check the option to move the entire object.
You also can start from a primitive Grid and Extract and/or Extrude faces from a set of faces (squares) to build your models.
Let say you want to create a tower of 10 cubes, you just Extrude->Normal one face using the constraint key [Shift] which will automatically move the new face in multiple of one unit positions while you are dragging the mouse.


I don't know you level of knowledge of Wings3D, so I'm going to stop here. Feel free to ask anything else you need. I use to check the forum at least once a day.