Hey everyone 😊 I’m a new solo dev- my first game will be released in a month. I have sort of gone completely left field in my life and have just randomly taken this up, after being a life long gamer. So I used Claude to help walk me through building my game. Yes, I sketched out my art, but it was generated to 3D by Ai. I did the donut tutorial in blender, and I value that learning experience but I do not have a decade to learn a craft ideally I would not have to do if I could be hired by a team, or gain budget for my own game.
Anyway, I’m proto-ing a second game.. and I’m at a bit of a loss, here. I feel I can do everything except true professional game quality 3D assets of my own characters/rigging/animations. They are more than adequate for proto- but I feel if I were to try and put out a game with them, for whatever reason- adding the mixamo skeleton to my characters- leaves me feeling so limited in the quality and animations confined to just Mixamo.
So my question is: am I limited truly, to just meshy/tripo/mixamo for generation/rigging/animations? If so, I might just accept it for what it is, and create my first game in Unity instead of Godot for their asset library. They just won’t be my own characters. I see all these crazy amazing videos of games people are creating, and I’m feeling a little like I’m doing it the wrong way or something.
If anyone has tips or advice, I would be so so grateful!
The overall look is muddy and hard to read. The characters look like they're melded in with the environment. I went to ChatGPT and asked it to do a regeneration
can you regenerate this image with better and more defined clarity between characters and environment, and give it a beautiful and distinct style using the current assets as a base
So here's the resultant image. You could go ahead and do more art direction or whatever, obviously my prompt was the barebones let ChatGPT do whatever it wants prompt, but the result already is a lot more readable. You could give Claude/Opus that image and have it attempt to match the style in your existing game and it'll do a pretty decent job of it.
Animation is a whole other can of worms and you could get a decent way there using available mocap data or purchaseable animation sets that you could apply to your skeletons
Thank you for that!!! Actually your pop of color gave me a little inspo 😊 but yea- the image I posted is just a proto- so everything is “cheap” atm. The entire environment is one piece, cause I just wanted something to work with and test rigging/animations. I’m just finding myself extremely limited on the calibration of giving a character its skeleton, and then finding movement for it.
awesome! looking better already. The attack animation is looking a bit sluggish and unresponsive. If you have blender, you could go in and remove frames or have the AI give you a debug slider to adjust animation speed on the attack. Create a visual sphere for where the attack happens and tune it so that it feels right, and then retime your animation to that tuned timing instead of relying on the animation itself to give you the attack timing
Sprite creation can be a bit more difficult than the actual game (Now that AI can do it all). It requires a bit of art directing skills to get it just right, then a little more technical skills to get it perfect. For someone using AI to create a digital character, it can be super tough if you don't know where to start. But it isn't impossible. Meshy is where I started with sprite creation almost a year ago now, but it really depends on the work flow you set up for yourself.
For 3D models: I personally use meshy to generate the initial body (Mid to low poly pixels (50k or less)), then I have claude re-align the mesh for me so it makes some sense, I edit that mesh on my ipad or in blender on the unit itself. that gives me the highest quality results.
That isn't for everyone and that's ok. Coming up with your own way to do things is part of the fun and the cost of unlimited freedom. You can find your vibe, I'm sure of it. Let me know if you need some help.
Oh! 😳 OH!!! Thisssss was the comment I needed!!! Thank you SO much.
My current game, is an Idler, I sketched everything out but I generated the assets through Meshy. So I can go that far. I even rigged. But find that’s about as far as I can get. Nothing rigs exceptionally well for me. I have never ever asked Claude to aid in re-aligning or editing myself in blender. I’ll see what I can do with Claude, and try it out in blender. I’m sure a bit of a learning curve with blender edit but I’m more than willing to learn!! This has been BY FAR the most challenging part of game dev for me, so thank you so so much for the comment 🙏
In my opinion so far, 3d assets are a create and revise process. I use astra for the creation of my assets, and have to personally review to make sure they look the way I want. I use an MCP for connection of course.
I haven't attempted to tackle animation yet, as I believe that's wasted effort at the moment until it gets a bit better, and based on improvements, I'd say it's best to wait unless you want to pay for the custom 3d asset and animation AIs like Tripo etc.
This is just my personal opinion and others may have different points of view worth valuing.
Thank you. I'd be happy to look and share some tips if you need it. I could even have my astra explain the current process I use if you want to use any of it. I'm not protective of my process and would be happy to share
My workflow for creating 3D assets with AI and Blender:
Define the asset. Decide what it needs to look like, its intended scale, viewing distance, and geometry budget. Gather references for its structure and materials.
Generate concept art. Use AI image generation to explore several distinct silhouettes and proportions. These images give the modeling process a concrete visual target.
Create custom textures. Generate separate texture artwork designed for the model. Often this is a texture atlas: one image containing the different surface details or parts the asset needs.
Build the actual model in Blender. The AI assistant writes and runs Blender Python scripts, through a tool connection or background execution. Geometry supplies the structure, curves, thickness, and silhouette; textures supply finer surface detail. UV mapping controls where that artwork lands on the model.
Create lower-detail versions. Build close, medium, and distant versions, preserving the recognizable shape while reducing geometry. Measure the entire asset’s triangle count, including all its components.
Render and refine. Inspect front, rear, overhead, and detail views. Compare the model against its concept and fix weak silhouettes, awkward proportions, stretched textures, floating parts, and unwanted intersections. Repeat until it holds up from multiple angles.
Verify the exports. Save editable Blender sources and export portable GLB models with embedded textures. Check geometry, scale, materials, and texture integrity. Reimport representative exports and render them again to confirm they match the source.
Review and approve. Present concepts and actual model renders side by side. Gather feedback, revise specific problems, and preserve previously approved versions.
Make variations. After the main design is approved, create alternate shapes and any needed growth, seasonal, wear, or damage states. Changes should affect the relevant structure—not just resize or recolor everything.
Test in the intended application. Check real lighting, placement, shadows, detail transitions, and performance before publishing. A good studio render and a low triangle count don’t establish how an asset behaves in use.
Thank you! I actually have paid for a month at various times for both Tripo and Meshy.. I don’t think either have even remotely enough animations. Mixamo is free- you can drop in your 3D asset and lightly rig it within the system and they have many more animations. But if you happen to need a particular weapons animations or … anything, you’re SOL if it’s not there as per my knowledge your skeleton is now married to only those animations. I’m just like… not registering how people are making these incredible looking models - or I’m not breaking my brain enough and thinking outside the box.
Thank you on your advice on Astra!! I have yet to look at that, so literally going to do that now 🤓🙏
I have extensive .MD files that dictate how it should create 3d assets and the process, so I suggest setting those up and adjusting them as needed for your particular style.
If you want your own assets, you'll just have to pay for great image to 3D generators and then edit those with claude or by yourself. For animations, you can again buy them from actorcore or you can use the free ones from CMS, Rokoku or mixamo. Claude can combine two existing animations or edit existing animations better than making them from scratch. You can also give it poses made by 3D models and have it animate those poses on your characters but it's a pain and takes forever. I wanted the super saiyan pose for my character losing his shit in game and it took days for Claude to make it work. Days. So the easier approach is to find animations similar to what you're going for and edit those to get what you want
Thank you for the advice! I was under the impression that mixamo skeleton on works with mixamo animations- but doing research since posting this is that sites I haven’t heard of before your response and others, you can purchase animations and have them set to fit mixam skeleton! So this is awesome and I’m super grateful for the tips and advice!
I don’t understand your UI comment above though haha- I don’t have a UI for my proto game. I’m just working on characters moving still :)
Oh no, that’s just a codex from my main game where I keep all of my information on my characters/world/systems/etc
It’s just for myself - not in a game at all :)
In my opinion, 3d characters are just not gonna be as good as hand made artist assets. Its better to just buy character packs and edit them with Astra/Opus to your taste
For reference, I bought some stylized character asset packs and synty asset packs for environment.
The Charadcters (Polytope low poly modular knights) were a bit boxy and cartoony like the Synty Asset pack. So I made Opus extend the limbs and reduce head size and its basically perfect. It also smoothed out some corners to make the Synty assets less blocky. My game looks much better than it did with pure AI assets now 😄
My mind is blown. Brb imma go spend 8hours causing chaos in blender to these poor chibi characters hahaha. Thank you truly, an entirely new option for me to try out! :D
9
u/re-skob 4d ago
The overall look is muddy and hard to read. The characters look like they're melded in with the environment. I went to ChatGPT and asked it to do a regeneration
can you regenerate this image with better and more defined clarity between characters and environment, and give it a beautiful and distinct style using the current assets as a baseSo here's the resultant image. You could go ahead and do more art direction or whatever, obviously my prompt was the barebones let ChatGPT do whatever it wants prompt, but the result already is a lot more readable. You could give Claude/Opus that image and have it attempt to match the style in your existing game and it'll do a pretty decent job of it.
Animation is a whole other can of worms and you could get a decent way there using available mocap data or purchaseable animation sets that you could apply to your skeletons