Is it possible to make a game look like a watercolor painting? 🎨✨ Dive into this tutorial and learn how to turn standard 3D rendering into a flowing, organic world that feels hand-painted!
In this video you’ll discover:
- A quick watercolor history and why it’s so special 🖌️
- The magic of transparency and luminous glow 💧
- Games that nail the watercolor look 🎮
- Step-by-step shader breakdown:
- Edge-darkened washes 🌑
- Non-uniform fills with subtle noise 🌊
- Irregular, blooming borders 🌱
- Layered, quantized transparency 🧩
- Subtractive CMY color mixing 🎨
- Tips to combine with hatching, outlines and more ✍️
- Workflow advice: modular development, debugging each pass, and later optimization ⚙️
If you enjoy deep dives into stylized rendering, smash that
Subscribe, hit the notification bell 🔔, and leave a comment with your questions or your own watercolor experiments!
Implementation Tips from other videos that apply here too:
- Dithering – https://youtu.be/Eqfu0meQVMs?si=jia9YFdaSXx8hKzj&t=209
- Outlines – https://youtu.be/t0qkieYME6E?si=QrbKXmwaBk-nLp_M&t=211
- Cross-hatching – https://youtu.be/NrYGC4hyCVg?si=ZEtHYO_L0W4za-n2&t=172
In this video we reference these games: Beyond Eyes • Book of Travels • Candle • Child of light • Dordogne • Été • Gris • Okami HD • Shivering hearts • Snufkin: Melody Of Moomin Valley.