I decided the first thing I'd do is create an environment in order to get the hang of the art style. I started off creating a museum great hall, kind of similar to the one in the Natural History Museum in London. This may have been a mistake in retrospect for two reasons: one, it's likely to be the largest area in the game and should be quite detailed and ornate. Two, I'm predominantly a character artist and don't do much environment work at all. That being said, working on the great hall has been a blast so far. Because all of the game's graphics will be prerendered I don't have to worry about polycounts, and so far I haven't had to UV unwrap anything as most things will use procedural materials rather than unique textures.

One of the most interesting things I've been doing so far is procedurally generated materials! When 3D graphics were relatively new, a lot of materials were done procedurally because textures took up a lot of processing power and storage space. In order to give my game that early 3D feel, I'm going to use procedural materials wherever possible. I'm a complete newbie to shaders so this was a really fun challenge for me.

Here is my procedural wood material, and the result applied to a wooden door. This is my favourite material that I've made so far. The marble material, on the other hand, needs a bit of work!

All of the materials I've made so far are actually quite similar, consisting of several layers of noise merged together using different blend modes and effects. I'm sure as I go on I'll learn more sophisticated techniques.

In order to get the look I'm going for, I've had to severely kneecap the Cycles renderer. Almost every option has been turned down to the minimum settings, or very close. This is a test render I created which I'm very pleased with.

None of this would have been possible without this amazing tutorial by SunnyIsOnline on YouTube. Definitely check it out if you want to learn how to make art in this style!