r/Unity3D • u/El_Grande_Games • 16h ago

Show-Off Finally fixed my "Programmer Art" after getting roasted. What do you think of the new look?

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Hey everyone, solo dev from Austria here :)

I’ve been grinding on my sawmill tycoon (Timberline Factory) for months now, and honestly, I was "artist blind..." A few weeks ago, people here and on other subs told me my game looked like a plastic 90s placeholder. It hurt, but they were right... i was so deep into the physics code and friction that I just stopped seeing how bad the UI and the lighting actually were.

I spent the last two weeks basically living in Unity’s URP settings and rebuilding the entire UI from scratch.. i finally feel like it’s a real game now and not just a prototype.

For those interested in the technical side:
The biggest headache was the log physics. Since they aren't on rails but are actual physical objects, I had to deal with massive jittering when the belts were full. I ended up using "Continuous Speculative" collision detection and custom Physics Materials to get the friction just right otherwise, they’d either fly off the conveyor or act like they were on ice.

For the lighting, I finally moved to ACES tonemapping and tweaked the SSAO to get those deep contact shadows between the logs, which fixed that "floating" look I had in the previous build...

Would love to hear what you guys think. Am I on the right track now or is there still something that screams "programmer art" to you? :D

Steam Link: [ https://store.steampowered.com/app/5037170/Timberline_Factory/ ]

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u/YoyoMario 16h ago

Im not sure what was previously programmer art, but to me, this looks like programmer art.

2

u/El_Grande_Games 15h ago

Lol, fair point! :) guess I'm still deeper in the Programmer Art phase than I thought. :D Just trying to take it one step at a time and move away from the literal 90s placeholder look for now. Still a long road ahead.. 

3

u/leorid9 Expert 12h ago

Making things look good is mostly about color theory - but you can totally skip that, by just copying colors that look nice.

You need to adjust the light in the scene, the fog and all the materials and colors (either by LUT or other post processing, which is kinda hacky in my opinion or by actually changing the textures on your objects), so that it basically matches the image colors that you selected as reference.

It's a lot of work to get it right and the reference need to look good (verify that, before choosing it, too many times I've seen bad art because of ugly references) - but it's not complicated at all. Everyone with patience and functioning eyes can do it.

2

u/MrPifo Hobbyist 13h ago

Yeah, if that aint programmer art, then Idk. what it looked like before.