3D Digital Art: Everything You Need to Know About its Free Tools and Techniques

3D digital art is one of the latest forms of art that have been playing an essential role in creating fascinating developments in various industries such as gaming, blockchain, and entertainment.

 

 As the name suggests, 3D digital art showcases a shape within a three-dimensional space so that a 3D object can be viewed from any angle, making it realistic enough. 

 

This type of art is used for digital sculpting, developing characters, games, films, cartoons, and many other industries. 

 

What is 3D Digital Art? See Pictures Here 

 

3D digital art is a form of digital art that is complex and intricate and shows highly realistic imagery in the pictures within a three-dimensional space. For 3D digital art, there are different techniques such as sculpting, modeling, rendering, texturing, lighting, baking, etc. 

 

The 3D digital sculpture artists have to process the piece of art from conceptualization to the final rendering so that the finalized art comes out as desired. Here are some 3D artwork examples for you: 

 

 

3D Art Styles for Games

 

3D art has always amazed the audience no matter how old it gets, as it showcases realistic aspects with a bit of stylized art. Another interesting aspect of 3D games is that they have various styles that give 3D digital artists a wide ground to experiment and play with their creativity. 

 

The more unique game art styles, the more the players will get hooked to your game. However, many game developers need clarification in determining which art style to choose for their next game. 

 

Don’t fret! Here is the list of video game art styles that will help you walk through each of them smoothly. Let’s look into it. 

 

List of video game art styles 

 

Filtered through a massive pile of 3D game art styles, here are some of the best video game art styles you can choose for your next game development project. Here is a list of video game art styles that will be discussed briefly below. 

 

• Hand-drawn art 
• Steampunk 
• Magical Realism 
• Low Poly 
• Realism 
• Voxel Art/Pixel Art

 

Hand-drawn Art

 

Hand-drawn style in game development refers to an art style that uses traditional drawing techniques, such as pencil and paper or digital drawing tablets, to create 2D game assets. This style often features fluid and expressive animations, focusing on conveying emotion and character through hand-drawn art. Hand-drawn style is used in indie games, platformers, and visual novels to create unique and charming visuals.

 

Magical Realism

 

It won't be wrong to say that magical realism is a very fine line between realistic game features and fictional game genres. Magical realism is one of the trending video game art styles that show fantasy characters, objects, and game environments while having life-like game objects simultaneously. It is definitely a treat for sci-fi, steampunk, and quest games fans. 

 

The most famous games developed in the magical realism art style are Kentucky Route Zero, Darklands, and Life is Strange.  

 

Low Poly 

 

It is one of the best game art styles in 2D and is a relatively new trend in the game industry. In such an art style, the art is created using polygon shapes, and the digital artist has to align each polygon following the required shape. 

 

Low poly art undoubtedly requires much time and effort, as creating a shape using polygons is not child’s play. Furthermore, low poly art does not include special techniques such as modeling, sculpting, baking, texturing, etc. It is a relatively simple style of art yet requires scrutiny and meticulousness. 

 

Realism 

 

The purpose of the realism art style in game art is to depict real-time activities and characters in games to deliver an immersive experience to the players. From the background setting and game environment to the game character and objects, the realism art style portrays the lifelike aspects to the players while they act as the main character. 

 

Genres such as shooter, adventure, RPG, simulators, and strategy games are developed in the realism video game art style. 

 

Voxel Art 

 

It is also known synonymously as pixel art, but they two differ slightly from each other. Pixel art uses individual pixels to create images; voxel art uses a grid-based system to build three-dimensional models. 

 

Voxel art is often used in video games, where its low-resolution and retro aesthetic can be used to create a nostalgic feel or a unique visual style. Some famous examples of games that use voxel art include Minecraft, Crossy Road, and Voxatron.

 

3D Digital Art Techniques 

 

To make 3D digital art look ultra realistic and stylized, artists follow certain techniques and processes to achieve the desired outlook. 

 

Tools like Blender, Maya, 3ds Max, and plenty of other tools give options to edit and stretch the digital art the way they want to see. 

 

The most common 3D digital art techniques are sculpting, modeling, lighting, baking and rendering. Each process assists in adding details to the art for the perfect look that matches the humanistic characteristics, gestures, and effect in all game props. 

 

3D Digital Art Software 

 

If you are interested in 3D digital art and ready to start your 3D digital art journey, it is vital to get hands-on experience with the tools and practice them as much as possible. 

 

Here are some of the best tools for 3D digital design: 

• Character Creator 3
• ZBrush
• MAYA 
• Blender 
• Autodesk 3ds Max

 

Art Development Process 

 

As previously mentioned, 3D digital art, such as 3D digital painting and sculpting, takes a tedious approach. There are three main stages for creating digital 3D art, i.e., pre-processing, developing, and post-processing. Let’s take a glance at them. 

 

Pre-Process 

 

As the name suggests, this stage determines the preliminary working of 3D digital art. It starts with understanding the requirements for 3D digital art, conceptualizing the idea, research and development, and developing GDD.

 

 

Development 

 

After pre-processing, the work for artists and game developers starts now. During this process, all the game graphics and renders are prepared that are ready to be deployed to the game.

 

The game art development process includes several steps to create a final realistic 3D digital game which is as follows: 

 

• Developing casual art for the idea of the 3D digital game art
• Developing characters, game environment, and game props
• Creating 3D models for the game characters and other game assets 
• Sculpting the 3D models to create a realistic bone structure of the characters and giving a touch of originality to the game objects
• Creating an animation of all the game assets and game characters to bring the movements and other lifelike details to the 3D 
• For a more ultra-modern look, artists give textures to the characters, environments, and objects, such as clothing, to give the perfect feel of natural things and animations.
• In the end, lighting, baking, and rendering are run to complete the process of developing 3D digital art. 

 

Post-Process

 

It primarily entails the support and maintenance once the game developers and artists have developed the digital art for the game. 

 

Special VFX and SFX are added to the digital art if they need to be in the animation. After the game mechanics and overall digital game art are prepared, it runs through the testing of the quality assurance team. Once the digital art for the game is completed, it is ready for launch and marketing as needed. 

 

3D Digital Art for Beginners

 

Are you on track to start your 3D artist journey? If yes, let’s come and see how to get started with 3D digital art for beginners. 

 

Understand the Basics of 3D Digital Art 

 

First, get the fundamentals of digital 3D art to grasp the basic idea of internally involved processes like sculpture, modeling, baking, and some tools.

 

If you are interested in a detailed set of lectures, some courses are conducive to getting you started as a beginner 3D artist. 

 

Explore Tools and Start Practicing 

 

Practice makes the man perfect, and with that being said, you must start real-time practicing on tools like Blender, Maya, ZBrush, and many others tools. 

 

Look up the tutorials on creating 3D digital art using game engines like Unity, unreal, and main tools so that you can discover the features and options that come with them.

Here is quick tutorial on how to create 3D digital art using Unity: 

 

 

An Overview of 3D Digital Art Workflow for Beginners 

 

To develop a 3d digital art product, the artists go through a process to build the 3D art. Here is the workflow for creating 3D digital art: 

 

• Conceptualisation
• 3D Modeling & Sculpting
• Retopology
• UV Mapping
• Texture Map Baking
• Texturing and Painting
• Rendering

 

Take a look at a brief description of the workflow:

 

Get 3D Digital Art for Your Next Game | InvoGames 

 

Get top-notch and ultra-modern 3D art for your game, enabling players to unlock the next-level gaming experience. With our ultra-realistic 3D art, we let players immerse themselves into the characters and game environment - setting new benchmarks. 

 

Contact us and get ready to make your next project a hit!