3D Pixel Art Pipeline
(AKA Rat Game)
Controllers are supported. Tested on Windows (NVIDIA GPUs, Intel & AMD CPUs), feedback on other devices is welcome - as well as feedback in general :)
Step 1: Overhaul Unity's render system with a custom render pipeline with deferred shading!
Normal pass
World position pass
Edge pass
Final result with edges and screen-space shadows
Step 2: Create lighting effects with Unity's particle system
Works well for 1000+ particles, but aesthetically is too much.
Step 3: Add water with refractions, reflections, and tone
Also changes lights underwater.
Step 4: Rolling volumetric fog
Step 5: Add the rat! Fully procedurally animated, and ground snapping movement
Camera snaps to discrete pixel space.
Step 6: Procedural grass rendering
Uses compute shaders, per blade culling, chunking, Unity job/burst system, wind interaction, and player interactions. Has negligible performance impacts.
Step 7: Add shadows back
Grass samples from shadowed terrain for full blade shadowing
Step 8: God Rays - Volumetric directional lights
Shell texturing technique with planes aligned parallel to light direction and rotated towards camera. (Increased alpha channel for increased visability in demo)
Step 9: Day night cycle
Morning
Day
Evening
Night
Full cycle sped up. Independent sun and moon lights. God rays clipped by clouds and regular shadows. Clouds generated from compute shader per directional light.
Step 10 (sneak peek): Fully modular leaf GPU instancer
Customizable two-tone leaves with toon shading + half lambert BRDF, clouds, and shadowing!