Once I had decided that I would be making a game in first person 3D, I knew very soon that I wanted to make something in the Raw 3D look of the mid to late 90s like the Quake engine or the PlayStation. But now that I have started making character models and textures in Blender, I really had to made concrete decisions about how much geometry would be on characters and environment objects, what character faces should look like, and how many pixels a texture should have per one meter of surface.

(Humanoid limbs have seven segments. Hands are cubes without fingers. Cylinders have 12 faces. Faces are a static texture on flat geometry. And 128 pixels per meter.)

The first choice I had to make for a visual style is do I want something in the style of Quake or in the style of Unreal. Unreal also has a really pleasant visual style, but in the end it became clear that it really has to be Quake. While the game Quake itself does have a visual design style that isn’t really isn’t offering anything that would make for a useful reference for any assets in Iridium Moons, I really like the amount of fine grain detail on the textures that really pops out when texture filtering is disabled. And the pixel density on environment textures feels like just the right resolution for me. Quake also has a crisp sharpness to everything that PS1 games generally don’t have. I think it’s the lack of dithering, which I also won’t be using for Iridium Moons.

The other main game that stands out as one of the best looking Raw 3D games with fantastic looking unfiltered textures is Metal Gear Solid. But that game is designed to be seen from a quite high up top down perspective, and the models and textures designed for that in mind, which is quite different from a very close up first person view. So I am going for a higher pixel density on textures, somewhat more polygons on character models, and more small environment clutter objects on tables and shelves. I really like the approach to faces, which is flat heads with a texture that is so low resolution that you can’t actually make out any details on any features. I always hated drawing faces and having to deal with eyes and mouths, and Metal Gear Solid has a style that gets around that while still being consistent with the overall aesthetic. The use of color in this game is really nice, and I just love the use of lighting in the environments, which is something hope to be able to somewhat emulate. I am not going to simulate any kind of graphics artifacts caused by the PS1 hardware, because that’s just a silly gimmick.

A better example of great looking PS1 graphics that are closer to what you would see in first person view is the Syphon Filter series. I feel Syphon Filter makes for a great reference for modelling and texturing characters. I also quite like the character animations, which I think are a bit more smooth with less stiff body posture than in Metal Gear Solid, but still have some of the low-fidelity jitter going on. I also definitely want those transparent pixelated fire sprites for all my fire effects. While the level geometry and environmental decoration is extremely sparse in Syphon Filter, it’s use of darkness and colored light looks really cool to me.

A more recent game that uses a similar visual design but isn’t limited by 30 year old hardware is Peripeteia. As with Quake, the design aesthetic of Peripeteia is very different than what I am going for with Iridium Moons. But I really like how it uses modern computing power to make use of space and scale with its environment. Somewhat unreasonably sized buildings and natural features is something that I think will serve the overall tone of Iridium Moons quite well. I also like how the level geometry is not only big cubes arranged on a square grid but with much more pillars, pipes, and stairs and some environmental objects.

I am also very intrigued by the level of detail seen in the trailers for Compound Fracture, which might be the only thing we’ll ever get of the game. There is considerably more going on in the environment than in the PS1 games or Peripeteia and I think this might perhaps be the perfect level of texture detail, environmental objects, and lighting for me. It would significantly increase the work time on asset creation and I’m not even sure if I will be able to pull this of. But if I could get there one day, that would be really cool. Again, the tone and aesthetic here are completely different than the intended style of Iridium Moons.

Everything I said about Peripeteia and Compound Fracture goes double for Beta Decay. I love the graphics of this game. The level of detail here is probably too high for what I’ll be able to achieve. But having these graphics in bright sunset colors would be an absolute dream come true for me. And I’m absolutely going to combine PS1 style textures with real time dynamic lighting. With tiny texture files, tiny polygon counts, and probably a very limited use of shaders, I think it should still be able to run on a total potato of a computer.

Iridium Moons first started as an idea from the thought of “How would I redo Star Wars from scratch if it were up to me?” I’ve always only really been a fan of the movies and the Expanded Universe we had in the 90s, but even back then there was almost as much unfitting nonsense being added to its worlds as today. Which parts would I keep as they are? Which elements do I feel were missteps? And how do I think they could have been done better and more in line with what came before? Everything that the world of Iridium Moons has become over the last five years is really just elaboration on that original question.

So the overall design style and aesthetic of Iridium Moons in my imagination was always extremely heavily based on The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. The way that Yoda’s Swamp, Cloud City, Jabba’s Palace, the Ewok Village, and the Imperial Outpost on Endor appear in the films is already incredible, but I think their aesthetic essence come through even stronger in Ralph McQuarrie’s concept art that those sets were based on. Even paintings for sets that never made it into the movies feel to me more like capturing the essence of Star Wars that matters to me than much of the later movies. But I am also just a really big fan of how he uses light to really bring those places to life.

Two other artist who’ve been around just as long but who I’ve become really aware of only fairly recently are Greg and Tim Hildebrand. Who not coincidentally were hired to make movie posters for Star Wars 50 years ago, and who did produce concept art for Shadows of the Empire in the early 90s, because their sense of aesthetic is quite similar with that of Ralph McQuarrie.

The first of these three I only found two weeks ago, and I think it’s become perhaps one of my favorite illustrations ever. Though I have no idea what that place or scene it’s showing is from. That third image from Shadows of the Empire might actually the the best and purest representation of the aesthetic sensibility of Iridium Moons that has been in my mind for some time now. The vibrant colors, the light and shadows, the stunning night sky, and the combination of retro-futuristic architecture with lush vegetation has everything I love.

I have had a fascination and infatuation with pine forests in the summer almost as long as I can imagine. It goes back to at least my first school trip to the Lüneburg Heath, a fairly big landscape between Hamburg, Hannover, and Braunschweig formed by the last two ice ages that is such barren, sandy soil that almost nothing grows there except for heather and pines. We did five half-day trips there over a week in first grade, and it’s been one of the most memorable experiences for me in my whole life. The light under the pines is something very special, and it probably also helped that the landscape can look a little bit like something from a dinosaur book from the 80s.

Seeing Return of the Jedi four years later and a big portion of it being set between and under those giant redwood trees cemented my fascination with these kinds of environment for all time. I also had some great vacations with my family in Southern Europe, where such pine forests are very common as well.

When I started resuming working with Blender last week and getting ready to make some first game environments, I had been thinking about what the general architectural elements are that make up the vague images for that have been floating in my mind for the last years. Particularly the Ralph McQuarrie designs of course, and then I had a sudden realization where else I’ve seen that general architectural aesthetic that I am envisioning as well. Ken Adam’s interior set designs for many of the James Bond movies.

If you’ve seen the Bond movies from the 60s and 70s a couple of times, you instantly know what the Bond Villain Lair style is. Ken Adam designed about half of them, and the other half very strongly follows the style he established in Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice. He also did the sets for Doctor Strangelove, which I think won’t come as any kind of surprise to anyone familiar with these movies. And considering the timeline and that both worked in movie production design, I think there’s a good chance that Ralph McQuarrie took considerable inspirations from Ken Adam’s style. He’s probably my favorite architect.

Both Adam’s James Bond designs and McQuarrie’s Star Wars design share a lot of very prominent features. The first that came to my mind immediately are the rows of support beams for the ceiling that protrude from the walls rather than being hidden inside them as it is usually done. Walls, and sometimes ceilings as well, are often slightly angled inwards, creating the appearance of a vaulted ceiling. Which often appears relatively low compared to the width of the room they cover. Lighting is added to these spaces often indirect, with lamps shining at the walls and reflecting into the space from there, and often directed to mostly illuminate the floor and lower walls, leaving the ceilings often quite dark. I don’t know if they are were I got that from, but I’ve always been lighting my homes in very similar ways. It just feels so much more cozy, with a hint of rustic. Which is a great match for the overall low-tech retro-futurism of Iridium Moons.

Ken Adam’s designs have clear influences from Brutalism, but his sets never had the appearance of actual raw concrete. It’s always either covered in warmer colored limestome or in the appearance of bare rock. Often with inexplicable fireplaces and fuzzy rugs, a lot of wood, and even lush plants. Which all helps with that hints of a rustic style in these hard stone environments. I think Brutalism is a very fascinating design style, but leaving the concrete completely bare always seems like too much and makes every space hostile and inhospitable. But add a bit of wood and some plants to it, and I think it can look really nice.

This is a very strong design aesthetic to use as a basis, but there’s also a couple of other things I want to add to that to give it my own personal touch.

I think lattice screens of any kind make every space instantly way more interesting and comforting. I think I got this idea from many of the artwork in the RPG Coriolis, where it’s a common element of the overall aesthetic. They also create shadows similar to pines (and planes, also a very nice tree), which I guess adds to my attraction for them. Though I do have some concerns that such visual elements might not work too well with low-resolution, unfiltered textures that make the Raw 3D look of the PlayStation so memorable. Covering already jagged textures with jagged see-through overlays might result in an excessively noisy image, and so this might not work out with the intended graphics style I am aiming for. But that’s something that will have to be seen later.

Another cool design element that is all over Coriolis is having decorative trims on the edges of fabrics. Which is something that I later noticed was also used by Ralph McQuarries design for the architecture of Tatooine, to make the otherwise plain and single color buildings more visually interesting. But I think that didn’t make it into the movies. Still very cool design, and I want to put that all over buildings and clothing in Iridium Moons.

And finally, something that I found very memorable back when I played Dragon Age II, were the huge bright orange banners that decorated many of the pretty barren walls in Kirkwall.

I think these really give a nice extra touch to bare sandstone walls, which I think will be in Iridium Moons a lot. And it’s such banners, flags, and awnings that are the sole reason I want to bother with any kind of physics in Iridium Moons at all. I think these will look even better when they are fluttering in the wind. And if there’s going to be cloth physics, might as well go all the way and have big capes and long scarves on characters as well. The golden sunlight and interesting shadows of pines are already cool, but they become even better with a persistent breeze from the sea. I lived close to the coast for most of my life, and practically all my vacations have been to the sea. And landscapes without wind are always only half as interesting at best.

So far, all of this still only exist as somewhat vague images in my head. But I think I have the component for something very strong and memorable, which I hope will give Iridium Moons a very specific look and aesthetic. Video game graphics style for a long time seem to have gone either for realistic drab or full out crayon cartoony. And especially in the Raw 3D style, nearly everything being done today is very dark brown and grey horror stuff. I think trying this with the Hildebrandt approach to color and light is going to be really fun.

So, Iridium Moons has now officially moved from preproduction to active development.

I have created the first game assets!

Wall cracks, 128×128 pixels and 64×64 pixels.

Blood splats in red, green, and yellow, 64×64 pixels and 32×32 pixels.

Some decals for cracks in walls and blood on the ground.

It ain’t much, but I made it. All by myself.

I originally started learning Blender probably over a year ago, but never finished the snowman. I tried getting back on that horse last winter, but only made it through repeating the introduction to the UI and the basic tools to deform a cube over two days. But this week I got once again interested in texture painting rather than 3D modeling, and though I couldn’t find any good introduction or explanations for the kind of things I want to do specifically, enough little pieces of understanding some basic concepts fell out of the tiresome process that I thought I actually do already have all the pieces to at least get a rough model thrown together that I could do some painting practice on.

My plan was to see what I can accomplish with what I already know and only looking up what menu items or shortcuts I need to select to get the tools I already understood in 12 hours. There was a lot of trial and error throughout the morning, but after six hours I had this model finished, and never having done anything with texture painting before, I got this completed after only 9 hours.

And I think for the purposes of making assets for a game with the graphics style of Quake and Metal Gear Solid, this is already perfectly serviceable. There’s actually way too many polygons on this model.

I’m feeling really good about this. If this is any indication, I think with some practice it should be quite possible to eventually create a mid-scope asset like this with the right level of detail for Iridium Moons in two or maybe three hours. Making one after work and a couple on the weekends, and that would add up to quite a lot over a year.