All around me, everyone (including myself) uses some form of stylized art for their game because you can accentuate what you want to stand out the most. You can also simplify, making art easier to model, set-dress and combine. If you do it well, your game would also stand out from all the others because of your style. Knowing this, we started to define the right style for our current game, a sports / simulation / puzzle climbing game called New Heights. For the demo we found a way to stylize its look, using asset packs and retextured high detail models of rocks. Very highly detailed rocks actually, because we need all the features of the rock model that a player can climb. This was one of the reasons for us to make our own 3D scans of rocks. Most rock models online are too low detailed and sculpting very detailed rocks by hand is very time consuming. But we now ran into the stylizing problem. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43535104/d2374234bc03b4fae8770c5879b5fbbf4dc8aa1f.jpg[/img] For the demo we used Substance Painter presets for generating nice textures, mostly based on curvature. But still, as you might see in the demo, it proved difficult for us to create the right amount of detail for the rocks. Whatever we did: the original textures always turned out much prettier and more interesting than whatever we came up with in Substance Painter. We also tried ‘stylizing’ the textures in photoshop with some filters, but it kind of came down to getting a lesser result than the original. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43535104/d4df7f58e07ccab03b456f86a79507de2fb6a2c9.jpg[/img] Then we realized something. We are creating a game that is based on one primary visual principle: show beautiful rock. Sure, also beautiful nature and nice looking climbing, but 90% of the screen will be filled with rocks / cliffs all the time! And somehow, whatever nature itself came up with, it is consistently nicer than our attempts at stylization. Of course! Being in nature is a huge motivation for many climbers like myself. So why would we take that away by stylizing it ourselves? Now we are taking the raw, 3D scanned materials as the base for the entire style. Everything else has to fit the looks of the rocks. For now that means a fully, utterly realistic art style, even with our small indie team. And wow, this is going so much smoother! There are enough great asset packs out there that can help us (specifically, a big thanks to NatureManufacture). Suddenly we can look around on the internet, and check what photos we want to make a reality! It seems to be the perfect timing for us to make this realistic looking game. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43535104/54ff7dd52beafbab3d611dfdc74a15b2fdc49d05.jpg[/img] Now we are facing the challenges as well. Animations need to be smooth and plentiful. Our climbing system will have to look even better. But at the moment we are mostly just relieved. Because coming up with - and creating the scenes, is quick, easy and looks great. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43535104/b0f5c055d445ec3b7daefa240532169868bdb16d.jpg[/img]