Hey everyone!

It's been a few weeks, so here's another update on where we're at and what we're cooking up. If you're interested in how we work on and polish the art for shapez 2, this one's for you.

Improved visual fidelity

We are constantly working on improving the current state of the visuals of shapez 2. Often we go back to some of our oldest assets - we take a fresh look and think about how we can give them that extra bit of love and polish. Which sometimes requires new workflows and thinking outside the box.

New detail workflow

During development we invested some time to implement a technique often used in game art. It is a combination of floating geometry and an atlas normal map. This technique has helped us to efficiently add details to our models while reducing impact on performance. As an example, here's a peek at our atlas map — a normal map texture that contains all the details we UV onto our models to add visual depth.

Here's another look into the workflow in Blender. As you can see, it is easy to iterate and detail our assets on the fly.

Below you will see some examples of our results utilizing the technique.

Fluid system visual rework

We continued using the previously mentioned workflow to revamp parts of the fluid system visuals. Our goal is to make the fluid-related structures and buildings easily distinguishable from the shape-related structures and buildings.

Here's the difference between the shape transporter belt and the fluid transporter belt:

And some before/after shots of the fluid belt lifts:

We also took the time to redo the fluid launcher / catcher to give them a unique appeal.

We are still working on aspects of the fluid system like the space pipes visuals and we are looking forward showing them off in the 1.0 release.

Another look into Manufacture mode

We made significant progress in developing the visuals of this new mode. This time we have introduced new colors and various smaller improvements to separate the different tiers of the converters. Take a look!

This is just a snippet of the different converters. There is more to come!

It’s always nice to reflect on the progress made, from the prototype stages to nearing the final visuals of the game mode.

There's plenty more coming in the 1.0 release and we hope this gives you an exciting look at what we're preparing. We hope this gets you as hyped as we are for the final version of the game.

Thank you for your time, and see you in the next one!

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