Read a thought in the mind of Gustaf Lindqvist

Here’s how I do the lightning and pixel-art textures for MegaSphere.

I assume you have a general idea of how unity and photoshop work. If not, its pretty easy to figure out, let’s go!

First, create your object base texture

In photoshop, start new document and create your object.

I suggest to go with a sprite sheet right away for your objects, instead of putting objects into separate files. Less files means less hassle with file import settings, maps, materials, performance optimisations. Make it pretty big (I start at 256x256 pixels), and you can adjust it later.

This is the base texture of our future object. I use a slightly modified metal barrel from MegaSphere as an example. I used restricted palette here, with some shading, but how your sprites will look is up to you. I feel some shading and depth in texture map itself add to the look of sprites in game.

I assume you already started a 2D project. Save your main texture PSD into your unity project. Find or create “Assets” folder, save it there or start organising like a grown-up and create a ‘Sprites/Objects’ folder.

In a new separate file, create the depth map for your object

This file is the data that tells the shader how to light your sprite.

Create a new document with exact same size as base texture file (don’t forget to resize it too, if base texture changes).

To make a depth map you need to think about your object in 3d. Pixels that are further from the ‘viewer’ are darker. Those closer to ‘viewer’ are brighter. There’s no color, just grayscale and transparency. Here’s how my barrel depth map looks:

Barrel is a cylinder so middle is closer, sides are further. Basically a horizontal gradient: black to white to black. I added 1px horizontal ridges, mirroring those in texture itself. The triangle window would be the insides, so its black.