Pixie in Pixelworld
Where even the smoke is pixels!
Pixie in Pixelworld
Model: Pixie
Latex by: L'Adinda Latex
Tools used: Blender, Photoshop
Created: November 2021
Crafting Notes
Originally, I intended to make this dull, barren grey world full of ash, dirt, sand and stones, all grey. I had this idea of adding this huge immense portal. A portal to a world full of light and wonder! Out of which came.. color! Powerful entities shining their energy everywhere, brightening up the world!
Awesome! So I started building.
It didn't work. Or at least, not yet. This is not that scene. This scene I crafted yesterday when it suddenly hit me that what I was actually building was never going to look the way I wanted it to. At least, not for now! So I trashpiled it to the future, and started working on something else instead. Blender -> File, New. There it was. The default cube. It stared at me. I stared back. I duplicated it. And again. And again. And again. I duplicated an entire world full of cubes! Materials? Procedural. Something cubistic! More cubes. Cubes within cubes! Cube-heaven! Smoke? Obviously! I'm still me.. but can we make it cube-like? Voxels? Pixelated? Yes! So here goes!
Here's a short video showcasing the world I built. As per usual, the entire thing only works from one specific camera angle, and all others will fail. It does show the world though!
Want to see more versions and more pictures of this series? Check below!
Iteration 1
Imported the model, added the portal, started working on the cube materials
Iteration 1
More material experiments.. not happy by far, but slowly getting there.
Iteration 4
Pixels? More pixels! I added a cube full of dead pixels as a background.
Iteration 6
I pixelated the smoke. That works much better already!
Iteration 9: the final result
Or at least as far as any result can ever be called final! Final enough for me, for now! The next project awaits!
Pixelated smoke-on-a-plane!
Here's my recipe to create pixelated smoke. Put this on a plane, array that 10 times in a row, done! The snap modifier is the hidden gem here, snapping the smoke generating noise textures to fixed points in space, in effect pixelating them.
Pixie
We did actually capture more than one shot, here's a random other one to exit this post :)