Stunning Low Poly

[VirtuMax]

Well, I am a reality kind of guy. And I find it fascinating when it’s possible to create very realistic images by digits. Low poly in my mind was looking more like childish, old-fashioned and non-professional. But the latter one is a prejudice I guess. So I tried to prove myself wrong by searching for “stunning low poly”.

The result is really refreshing. Good look, artistry or professionality do not depend on the polygon count. Found a lot of great images looking like surrealistic worlds or origami figures. Some give even a certain amount of realism.

And to be honest, I don’t have an illusion that those “easy looking” low poly images are easy to make. Sometimes you need a lot of experience to draw a whole image with just a couple of key lines.

I have chosen one image I was very impressed about and I put it here as illustration. Please, if you do the same search for the “stunning” low poly pictures, share what is yours “perfect low poly” image here under.

A picture by Mat Szulik (source with more pictures from the same project: https://heydesign.com/2017/01/lowpoly-world-illustration-destinations-around-the-world/)

[capa14]

These are some fantastic scenes and I can’t choose the best !

I also don’t have the illusion that it’s easy to make these.
Actually i’m pretty sure that is super hard lol.
“It was my biggest and most complex lowpoly project so far” says the Author

But! If you stop to think, once you have a high poly object it’s “easy” to convert to this style !

Supposing it was made in Blender:
I risk to say that some objects (if not all) were made high poly and then Decimated.
Because make all of these out of pure triangles should be impossible.
Also if you notice there are no flat surfaces, because if there were, the triangles would not be seen everywere so there has to be a displacement modifier to every object. Or they were “unflatened” by hand.
But there must be some shader trickery too. I think it’s not just the shadows that are making the the color variation of the faces.

I should test my hypothesis someday and try to create a scene in this style

Thanks for the inspiring post!

[VirtuMax]

Thank you for sharing, @capa14

Had the same idea crossing my mind - those are probably high poly (or let’s say higher poly) images “decimated” or reduced to a low poly.

As for the surfaces like water… as someone who knows Photoshop better than Blender so far I had to think of using a filter or any other way to “pixelate” (or in this case “triangulate”) the high poly image and put it back as a shader. While browsing for the “stunning low poly” I found some images like this - those were looking like images after a “pixilating”/“triangulating” filter is applied.

[capa14]

Ha!

Quick Tip: Easy Randomize Face Color with Cycles

Told ya it was a Shader Trickery

With the NodeGroup set all you need to do is set the colors of the Ramp

[VirtuMax]

Of course… have to learn to think more Blender, that it can much more than I know

Thanks, @capa14

[VirtuMax]

Well, I tried that tip, @capa14

But to be honest, for a landscape, using just “Normal” from the “Geometry” input gives a more consistent result than a random setting.

[capa14]

That’s really good!

Have to try myself

But think in this case maybe if you have perfect flat surface wont help much since they will all have the same normal.

[VirtuMax]

Well, I thought this blender daily tip about making a low poly tree would perfectly fit this thread, so let’s put it here:

[capa14]

This is quick video is really nice!

Looks like also teaches how make stuff look like Voxel.

EDIT: yep it does lol.
Do you remember this scene?

[VirtuMax]

Wow, looks good! Let’s bury the low poly scene under the sand and start over with HP