GCAP 2017

One of the key visual elements of Necrobarista is its’ 3D, anime-inspired graphics. While most visual novels use anime-style graphics, most utilize 2D engines with sprite-based assets. Our aim was to create an efficient way of generating modular, reusable assets for our game to counterbalance the increased costs of working in 3D.

In this talk we explore the various techniques we used in Necrobarista to create an effective NPR pipeline emulating anime art-styles while maintaining a cost-efficiency suited to an indie budget. Topics covered include shaders, facial rendering, animation, and pipeline integration of assets from Maya to Unity. The talk will also detail pipeline and budget breakdowns targeted towards small to medium sized studios, as well as specific top-down design principles we applied to our pipeline.

As part of the talk, we will be working off a live Unity project to demo the discussed techniques as they are explained.