🎨 How I Build Art for My Game Twin Flames — From Low-Poly Dreams to Breathing Worlds

By Venkatesh Muskam
Solo Game Developer | World Builder | Creator of Twin Flames

“Stylization isn’t a shortcut. It’s a superpower.”

When you're a solo dev, everything — code, tools, art — flows through you. In my game Twin Flames, visuals aren’t just background dressing. They’re part of the experience, the emotion, the identity.

This is my custom art creation pipeline in Unity — how I go from a blank scene to an ethereal, low-poly realm.

🔺 Why Low-Poly?

Realism is powerful — but it’s expensive. I chose low poly not just to save time, but because it matched the tone of Twin Flames. It’s expressive, fast to create, and full of charm.

It also enhances gameplay: the simplified visuals keep the focus on the puzzles and the story.

🌍 Building the Five Lokas

In Twin Flames, players travel across five mystical realms, or lokas, each with its own biome:

• 🌳 Forests

• 🪨 Rocky valleys

• 🌾 Grasslands

• 🏜️ Deserts

• 🏔️ Floating mountains

Each biome visually supports the story, reflecting growth, decay, clarity, or conflict.

✨ Toon Glitter Shader — Stylized & Magical

I wanted the game to feel surreal, energetic, and ethereal, so I created a custom toon glitter shader. It renders vertex colors and adds sparkly highlights with toon-style shading.

It doesn’t try to mimic the real world. It creates a new one.

🌿 Custom Tools for Foliage

Procedural tools changed the way I work. I built a custom foliage generator that lets me create endless plant variations — instantly. I didn’t want fixed, repetitive models. I wanted a living world.

For one loka, I designed a corrupted root enemy that spreads dynamically across terrain. I built another tool for that — it auto-detects surfaces, scales roots, and adds a breathing animation via vertex shader.

🌬️ Environmental VFX That Breathe Life

Motion brings immersion.

I added particle effects like:

• Wind gusts

• Dust clouds

• Subtle smoke

• Foliage movement via vertex animation

These details may be small — but they make the world feel alive.

🔥 Lightmap Baking = Patience

Lighting is critical. I use baked lighting in Unity to get that soft, glowy look. But the downside?

🕒 It takes 30+ minutes to bake. And during that time, Unity becomes unusable.

A better PC would help, but for now, I plan my work around it.

🎛️ Post-Processing for Mood & Focus

My post-processing stack includes:

• 🌟 Bloom

• 🎯 Vignette

• 🎨 Color Adjustments

• 🔍 Depth of Field (to focus on puzzles)

• ⚪ White Balance

Together, they create a mood that’s calm, mystical, and focused.

💬 What I Love (and don’t)

Every step of the pipeline has its beauty.

Even though modeling takes longer and baking slows me down, I genuinely enjoy every part. This is my dream — building worlds from scratch.

“I don’t just want to make games. I want to create worlds.”

 

🚀 Final Thoughts

This art pipeline is my foundational step — not just for Twin Flames, but for everything I’ll build in the future.

Stylization gave me freedom.
Procedural tools gave me scale.
Unity gave me the canvas.
And now I’m painting worlds.

📌 Follow the Journey

🔗 Steam Page – Wishlist Twin Flames
📸 Instagram – Dev Updates
🔗 LinkedIn – Connect with Me

🎮 Twin Flames is coming soon. Every wishlist, follow, and comment helps me bring this game to life. If you're a fellow dev, dreamer, or puzzle lover — I’d love to hear from you.