Pixel art in 3D: picoCAD or Crocotile

A while ago on this blog I mentioned Crocotile for doing “pixel art in 3D” in my next game. Another similar tool that I’ve been watching for a while is picoCAD; that’s a lightweight modeling tool that uses low-res pixel art for textures.

Well, picoCAD 2 released just over a month ago, so I picked that up and created my first model (it’s a toy I have on my desk) in that tool:

That worked pretty well! The tool was simple to use for 3D modeling and has texture editing built right into it. The first version of picoCAD required you to import pixel art that had been created externally, but picoCAD 2 has a pixel art editor right in it.

My next step in figuring out the workflow for art in my game is seeing if I can import models from picoCAD into Crocotile. After all, while picoCAD is great for creating individual props and buildings, but I’m still planning to use Crocotile for the full scene.

Alternatively, if I find that importing models from picoCAD doesn’t really work, I’m going to try painting pixel art textures in Crocotile. I didn’t realize this before but Crocotile actually has texture paint capabilities. I haven’t tried to model anything more complex than a grid of tiles, but apparently you can do more intricate modeling in Crocotile. I’m going to try that myself, so wish me luck!

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