This tech should not be forgotten, it is good enough all on its own.

No textures anywhere in this scene. Badger’s eyes are a separate mesh (to have a shiny material, probably could be joined though) but everything else is its own mesh, and the saucer has a glow effect on the bottom and notches (the dome is just smooth shaded).

Forgive any lazugliness here, haven’t done much in a while and this isn’t for anything other than fun/testing. Also odd trying to test things that use vertex colors in the way I want to show while also being easy enough for me to create.

Would like to use stuff like this with Godot (locked into 3.X for the language that I want) or Raylib, I wanted 2D but this is supported better (though it is a bit higher of a barrier). Haven’t tested it yet, I assume some of the methods I used (flat shading, face colors aka face masking) increase vert count (assuming they don’t cause issues, like rendering via Eevee Cycles causes visible triangulation).

Aesthetic notes: I prefer the native-resolution look (no pixel filter) and don’t mind materials/effects (if it’s not too intensive). I’m not totally against textures, but I’d use them sparingly and grayscale (and maybe even general purpose patterns that are used in multiple places).

Vertex color skyboxes are magic, too. Not attempting that yet, but a tool does exist for it.

Blender side note: I made a spiral vase via modifiers (yes, because Spyro 2 vase), I don’t suppose it is possible to

1. get hard edges without altering mesh (rebuild) or applying modifiers

2. put vertex color stripes on dynamically without applying modifiers?

3. use geometry nodes for something like this viably?

Also separate note, but I assume greasepencil would be useful for things like wall art or even cutscenes. Probably not so much for 2D if it needs to be rendered out first.