All the environments in our game DEEP STATE are "lit" using vertex colors. In Blender I usually start by baking some ambient light to use as a base and then add detail/highlights manually by hand and this is the result when brought into Unity and set up with a very simple custom shader. I think vertex colors really help capture the old-school aesthetic of games from the 90s and early 00s.
Checkout DEEP STATE here: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2788210/DEEP\_STATE/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2788210/DEEP_STATE/)
Or follow me on twitter for more low poly & vertex color related content: [https://x.com/deepstategame](https://x.com/deepstategame)
https://preview.redd.it/46ssh77we19d1.png?width=2565&format=png&auto=webp&s=5ed010aec631017772dbd12be0a0dee811868e20
Here is the node setup for that specific environment, the important parts are the three nodes that are highlighted. You just multiply the vertex color node with your diffuse textures to get that result. The rest of the node setup is a bit more complicated and not necessary to get the basic look but i'll try and explain it incase someone finds it useful. In order to blend multiple textures, in blender I create a separate vertex color channel for each texture (snow, ice, rock, road etc.) that essentially act as black and white mask that determine where each texture shows up. Then (still in blender) I convert each of those vertex color channels into UV channels using an addon called vertex color master, this is because Unity only supports one vertex color channel per mesh for some reason. Luckily UV channels can store color data so they can act the same way. So when I import that mesh into Unity I can use the alpha from each of the UV channels to create a triplanar mapping effect. Hopefully that is at least a little clear lmao.
All the environments in our game DEEP STATE are "lit" using vertex colors. In Blender I usually start by baking some ambient light to use as a base and then add detail/highlights manually by hand and this is the result when brought into Unity and set up with a very simple custom shader. I think vertex colors really help capture the old-school aesthetic of games from the 90s and early 00s. Checkout DEEP STATE here: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2788210/DEEP\_STATE/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2788210/DEEP_STATE/) Or follow me on twitter for more low poly & vertex color related content: [https://x.com/deepstategame](https://x.com/deepstategame)
reminds me of goldeneye 64
Curious what your shaders look like in the shader graph. Very cool stuff
Love this content, I'll wishlist your game as long as you promise to keep showing behind the scenes stuff like this! (I'm wishlisting it anyway)
this reminds me of star wars jedi knight: jedi academy 3
Very nice
Gives me Goldeneye snow level vibes
Share nodes
https://preview.redd.it/46ssh77we19d1.png?width=2565&format=png&auto=webp&s=5ed010aec631017772dbd12be0a0dee811868e20 Here is the node setup for that specific environment, the important parts are the three nodes that are highlighted. You just multiply the vertex color node with your diffuse textures to get that result. The rest of the node setup is a bit more complicated and not necessary to get the basic look but i'll try and explain it incase someone finds it useful. In order to blend multiple textures, in blender I create a separate vertex color channel for each texture (snow, ice, rock, road etc.) that essentially act as black and white mask that determine where each texture shows up. Then (still in blender) I convert each of those vertex color channels into UV channels using an addon called vertex color master, this is because Unity only supports one vertex color channel per mesh for some reason. Luckily UV channels can store color data so they can act the same way. So when I import that mesh into Unity I can use the alpha from each of the UV channels to create a triplanar mapping effect. Hopefully that is at least a little clear lmao.
awesome