Modeling Guidelines

Now that we’ve covered the high-level reasoning for the styling of HYTOPIA, lets get into some more specifics. The following rules are intended to help creators better match their art to the HYTOPIA style.

Shape Depiction

HYTOPIA simplifies objects to just a few cubes. This strategy entails prioritizing the big shapes and ignoring finer detail in the geometry, then adding detail back later through the texture. Allowing textures to do the heavy-lifting for detail, further improves model turnaround.

Utilizing a single block to simplify geometry

Using Planes

A plane, often called a “billboard” or “”, is a two sided shape with no height in 3D space. Think of a sheet, or a piece of paper. Textures are generally mirrored onto each side.

An avocado texture on a plane at different angles

In an effort to reduce mesh count, it is often better to use a singe plane instead of multiple cubes to depict the same object detail.

Replacing actual geometry with a 3D plane allows for more detail without significantly increasing the vertex count of the model. The shape represented by the plane needs to be sufficiently thin for the illusion to work.

Utilizing a plane instead of blocks

Scale & Proportions

While the proportions of an individual asset are exaggerated in this art style, its size relative to other assets and the world around should be consistent. For example, in real life a cow is bigger than a donkey. So, while the in-game cow isn't a 1:1 match to its real-life counterpart, it should still be bigger than the in-game donkey, more or less in the same ratio as in real life.

Actual cow vs donkey proportions

Using the correct relative proportions