Currently I am making a game, that I want to look like a late PS2 Early PS3 type game, and frankly I only know how to use UE4, but UE4 looks way too good for what I’m doing. Basically, I want to strip the game of every fancy super graphic stuff.
Here is currently what everything looks like with my character, and it’s absolutely horrid, and the shadow under her hair is really bothering me, just not a good look,
But I also want there to have the proper lighting and shadows, in which it actually looks ok in terms with the model and just that, no real fancy effects. Just for reference, this kind of look is all I need:
So is it possible to achieve this effect, cause I would really not want to learn Unity or Godot just because it’s impossible to do this, their UI’s are horrid compared to UE.
I think the first thing you’ll want to do is disable Ambient Occlusion - the shadow under the hair looks like AO and earlier games didn’t utilize it. You also might want try switching the Skylight ‘cast shadows’ setting on and off - this can provide a very ‘unlit’ look to some degree. I think a lot of the PS2/PS3 look comes from the simpler meshes and low res textures, but maybe try making all of your materials 100% rough or non-metallic or non-specular and seeing what results you come up with. A great recent example I can think of is Night of the Consumers although it is a bit more PS1 haha.
I also wanted an unlit look + lighting and shadows for my current project, although it has a very different aesthetic. Aside from full cel-shading, doodling around with the Skylight settings was a huge part of achieving the balance of not having crazy-deep shadows.
