FINAL STEPS
PAINT OVER THE RENDERSIMULATE 3D LOW POLY IN 2D
As the low-poly genre becomes more and more
popular, more people are trying it out, but not
everyone knows how to do it properly. To learn
the basics of Blender, you should probably
spend few days learning, but it could take an
eternity to learn every aspect of it. The same
could be said about any other 3D software.
However, there is an alternative way – you can
simulate low-poly 3D style using any 2D
redactor you like, vectors in Illustrator, or the
Pen in Photoshop. The pros of this method are
you will not waste your time on theory of 3D
modelling, and waiting hours for your model to
render. But the cons are you will never get the
right lighting and shading in a flat illustration.12
ADJUST THE COLOUR
It’s much faster to correct and adjust the lightness and the
colour of the render in Photoshop. The render result greatly depends on
the colour you have chosen and how you placed the light sources. To
get the best result, use Levels and Saturation to make your render
bright enough to see what happens on the Moon side, and dark enough
to feel the night and day border – the balance is what you’re looking for.
Adjust the colours so they are not too bright and keep the natural look.13
APPLY A FILTER
The goal of low-poly artwork is to emphasise the faceted, polygonal look. After
you make a render, you can improve the faceted look by applying the Smart Sharpen filter.
Go to Filter> Sharpen>Smart Sharpen. Be very accurate with this tool, you should catch the
edge between polygons, but shouldn’t make the whole model look noisy. A one to two
pixel radius and 50% effect should be enough, but this depends mostly on what you want
to get as the result.14
ADD MORE CONTRAST
To make the model look even better, you can manually paint the polygons. This is a great way to
add contrast and adjust the faceted look, because the real render is sometimes not as expressive as it
should be. Create a new layer, select the Pen tool, and select polygons on the border between light and
dark, or polygons on small models, to attract more attention to them. There are two rules: first, make the
light polygons lighter and the dark darker, so the contrast increases. And second, use smooth big brushes.
The best results are when the painted polygons are not distinguishable from the non-painted ones.3D AND PHOTOSHOP