How to make pixel art with blender

Summary

Lucas Roedel demonstrates how to create and animate a pixel-art-style Tatsugiri sprite in Blender without drawing the model by hand or using AI. The process uses simple 3D shapes, a pixel-art rendering add-on, and post-processing in Aseprite. The finished animation can also be turned into a sprite sheet and imported into Unity.

Techniques and Process

Modeling

Build the character from simple shapes. Keep the model uncomplicated: the low-resolution render hides many imperfections, and this technique does not support textures.

Pixel-Art Rendering

Install the add-on, set up the scene, and create its pixel-art material. Use a Color Ramp to choose colors, arranging them from darkest to lightest. Adjust the number of colors, lighting, dithering, output resolution, and outline thickness.

Details and Shadows

Create the rice texture by displacing a subdivided cube with a Noise Texture. Make the eyes and irises separate objects with assigned materials. To remove an outline from the shadow, place it in a collection and exclude that collection from the Freestyle line set.

Rigging and Animation

Pose the character and rig the eyes. Experiment with idle poses, animate the iris, and create a blink by switching between open- and closed-eye models. Add a spinning jump for extra movement, and frequently check rendered frames to judge the poses.

Lowering the Animation Frame Rate

In the Graph Editor, add a Stepped Interpolation modifier to the animation curves. The example uses a step size of 3. Copy the modifier to the other curves for a non-destructive, lower-frame-rate look.

Exporting and Adding Effects

Render the animation as PNG frames. Optionally, use Aseprite to clean up frames and draw smear lines or other effects, then save the edited frames over the originals.

Final Render

Assemble the frames in Blender’s Video Sequencer. Scale them with the Nearest transform filter to preserve crisp pixels, set the output resolution and frame range, and render as an FFmpeg video.

Unity Sprite-Sheet Workflow

Export the animation from Aseprite as a sprite sheet, remove the background if needed, and import it into Unity. Set the texture type to Sprite, use Point filtering, disable compression, slice the sheet in the Sprite Editor, and adjust the animation frame rate.

The closing demonstration shows the animation rendered from several angles, with the camera switching between them.

Creators and Contributors

Lucas Roedel presents the tutorial and identifies himself as the add-on’s creator. He also thanks those who downloaded and donated to support the add-on.