Terminal Phase's Thread of Things He Made That He Likes Looking At.

[Terminal Phase]

Hi, this is my thread. I make things I like looking at. I don't have any formal schooling or training other than some online courses via domestika or other similar services, so if you guys see anything I'm goofing up or could improve on, please let me know! I'm also always interested in hearing recommendations for courses or tutorials to check out, and am looking forward to learning from everyone.

Currently I'm working on learning PSX/Dreamcast/PS2 stylized renderings, environment design, and Blender's Geometry nodes. I'd like to get into character modelling at some point as well but I'm still looking for a decent course on how to do that while staying pretty low poly.

Brawler's World has been a very big point of inspiration for me, since I really love the more subtle use of psx/ps2 stylizing while creating scenes that feel like you're getting a glimpse into an entire cohesive world. I've also really liked what I've seen from .45 Parabellum Bloodhound's trailers since it captures a really unique feeling and look without relying solely on nostalgia to achieve it. It's not my intention at all to be making stuff that's derivative or ripping off either inspiration, so if you guys think I'm drifting too far towards that, please call me out!

The first render using this PSX type stylization that I've been pretty happy with is this small cityscape. It took a while to get city textures I was happy with, as well as figure out a layout that looked decent for the camera, but I think those things will speed up with experience. I made it two months ago and I'm looking forward to giving another scene a shot soon. I also can't wait till I can get around to learning proper animation/rigging to really make scenes come to life.


Life's been busy but most recently I've been working through a beginner geometry nodes for the last month and the animation below is a variation on one of the lessons, just using a noise texture for animation and a larger grid rather than a wave texture and a smaller grid. I'm pretty happy with how the lighting and look turned out. The intersection between motion graphics like these and PSX/Y2K stylizing is something I'm excited to keep messing around with, especially with making things that could feel like background/loading screen animations from games of that era.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1859065035990979051

I'm unsure how much Twitter's compression will mess with the quality so here's an Instagram link in case that works better.

I've really enjoyed looking around this forum so far and seeing what everyone's been making, and I'll do my best to update this thread as I make new stuff!

 

[KeplerElectronics]

I'll never get sick of low poly cityscapes. These both look awesome!

 

[jadd]

i see a city picture i click like (it indeed looks good)

 

[Terminal Phase]

Small-ish Update.

I've hit a small energy related roadblock with modeling assets for now. I'm not at the level of experience where I can knock out an asset with the same energy used as messing around in AfterEffects or Photoshop. Work and life has also been busy enough that I haven't had the isolated 3-4 hours I'd really like to finish modeling/textuing the dock scene I have concepted out. Hopefully we'll get some progress there this weekend.

On the bright side in the free time that I have had, I've made some more progress with the beginner Geometry node course. I took one of the lessons and tweaked some stuff to make an abstract ring animation, then ported the footage into AfterEffects and built a small animated poster/cyberpunk feeling ad for a fake PMC out of it. I'm pretty happy with the result considering the effort expended.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1867762216553902146

To try and push it the extra mile I went ahead and threw together a quick LED Screen/simple billboard scene in Blender and rendered the animation with it.

View this content on Instagram

View this content on Instagram

Looking back at this I think the resulting shape is just on the edge of flirting with metalheart stuff. Namely feeling like the stuff Kimi Takemura did for Nuphory's Hypertrance 2. When I first saw those visuals a year ago I reached out to Kimi to ask if she had any tips for learning how to do similar stuff. She was extremely nice and gave me some pointers. The use of Houdini stalled my attempts to learn how to make similar stuff, since I can really only afford Blender for now, but I think Geometry nodes might be the answer. Once again its not my intention to rip anyone off or plagiarize them so if you guys think I'm straying a bit too close to that please feel free to call me out.

Back to metalheart I think that would be an area I'd really like to learn properly once I get this dock scene finished. One of my goals is to get to a point where I can compile collections of visuals to upload alongside mixes I make, and Metalheart stuff would help with adding to that collections. Please feel free to leave any tips, pointers, links, or whatever regarding Metalheart stuff if any come to mind!

 

[Terminal Phase]

It's been a minute!

I've been bouncing around various topics/design disciplines. I think I'd make more progress if I just stuck with one, but they all feed into each other, so I end up focusing on one until it catches up with what I want to do, then moving to the next once I find that gap. I bought a rigging course, and an animation course, but I need something to rig and then animate, which means I develop actual drawing skills so I can draw modeling references for what I want to make, etc.

While I have a ways to go with all of that, I have been continuing with simpler, less interconnected stuff whenever I get the time and don't feel like grinding away at drawing/character/modeling/etc. Right now we're still plugging away at getting this crane done for a dockyard scene idea I have.

I'm trying to mix in NPR shading with the PSX stylization, adjacent to stuff like Jet Set Radio. This crane specifically is large enough that texturing it with a traditional texture map has me at a standstill. If I texture it so it'll look good up close, it'll tile pretty obviously or not look right from a distance. But if I texture it so it looks right from a distance, any close in shots will look muddy. NPR shading/texturing helps with this, but I'm also trying my hand at a simple procedural texture to give it more variation. I'd like to give it procedural edgewear too, but I can't get the Ambient Occlusion edgewear technique to look like actual rusted/chipped paint at this scale.


Here's what the crane looks like clean. Very smooth but it almost feels too smooth to me.


Here it is with a really subtle paint chipping procedural texture done with some basic noise nodes.
I kept it pretty minimal to preserve a lot of the smooth quality, but at this scale it might need to be more obvious, especially if its most likely to be viewed on a phone.

Once the texture gets dialed in properly I'll have to make a number of shipping crate textures, which should be pretty fun as long as the image textures don't clash too hard with how smooth this looks. If that fails then I'm not sure what I'll do to get similarly smooth shipping crate textures. I guess I'll either model the physical ribs/creases in the containers or I'll learn how to paint my own textures. Then comes modeling the trucks used to move shipping containers around dockyards, and a boat, but neither of those should be too difficult.

My goals for 2025 are as follows:

• Draw a decent character reference.
• Make at least one character model that doesn't turn into Cronenberg style bodyhorror once animated like my previous attempts have.
• Learn how to animate a simple fight scene of some sort with the models I make.
• Make enough unique looping visual elements that I can release a mix of music on youtube with my own visuals.
• Overall develop my own unique visual style more.

It's easy to get annoyed with myself that I didn't start 3d modelling and general design principles when I was a teenager with way more time on my hands, but I'm thankful that I've picked up all this in around a year of effort and I'm happy that I'm making progress.

Final closing thing I'll leave this with is another source of inspiration I found today. I really like how both the environment and the UI elements look in this overlay.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1879256761351426122

I'm not sure of the name for this style, earliest thing it reminds me of is "The World Ends With You" DS game I saw in Nintendo Power as a kid. Also elements of Splatoon and Zenless Zone Zero. Let me know if you know the name for this style/genre and if there's any learning sources/tutorials you'd recommend!