Define the forms of the tree more clearly, and that will help you see where snow would be able to lie and where it would not. Your tree looks more like a textured cardboard cutout (2D shape) now, it has no 3D form.

A cardboard cutout wouldn't have much snow on it (unless it's very sticky snow blowing at a proper angle xP).

I think you have enough snow showing. The forms don't look good, but that's just a result of the tree not having good forms. It definitely reads like a tree with snow on it, so you're successful there!
I don't think you need the midtone on your snow. Snow is very bright. Depending on the lighting conditions, you might not even see shadows on it, it's just globs of white. There are definitely almost never discernible highlights on it though (aside from speculars from individual crystals), snow is too light in colour for that. I think having some shadows is fine in this case. I would keep all three snow-colours, but use the lighter colour for most of it, keep the shadow colour where it is, and use the middle colour only for AA.

Depending on the type of tree this is meant to be, you might get it to look better by changing the shapes of your snow-globs. If this is something like cypress where it's effectively a solid mass of branches and leaves, then your current ones are fine. If it's something with distinctly visible branches, then you might want to have more horizontal ones, suggesting them lying on top of branches.


By the way, you should have posted this in the WIP forum, that's the place to go to post your work for critique/feedback. You should ask a mod to move your thread (by PMing one or reporting the thread).

The snow in the first image is ground-snow, and it looks like it has shadows cast on it from elsewhere, in addition to its form shadows. It still has no outright highlights. It just has a smooth transition from light to dark, which is what using your middle colour as AA would help achieve. As-is, your lightest colour reads as highlights rather than a main colour, because it's not dominant. In your example the snow is somewhat backlit so shadows dominate, but your tree looks like it's top/front-lit, so light dominates, which would imply that the lightest colour should dominate. I'm not sure whether that's your goal, though.

The tree in your second image is a fir tree, and it has distinct branches. Notice how in that image, the snow patches are mostly horizontal, because the branches are largely horizontal and the snow sits on top of them. Then, from those large horizontal areas, you get some smaller vertical ones from the smaller branches that come off the main ones. The tree's form determines how the snow lays on it.

Here, how about this:



It certainly is! I was just showing the transition effect I was going for! How it's even blue in the shadows!

I think Fusionnist might have been talking about how your shadows  follow the shape of your... shapes, without creating any forms of their own. So, more like this, perhaps?

Your example is essentially a flat gradient with only a slight suggestion of form. This clump of snow has a clear form, with its own hills and valleys. Most of your snow clumps don't need to be this complex, but they shouldn't look flat. Even a simple round shape shouldn't just have a flat gradient, the shadows should follow the form.

Yeah I meant that :)

I think it's an improvement. I feel like a lot of your shadow work just ends up lost though, because the contrast is so low, and the image is so small that you can't see much.

You should definitely get rid of the line down the middle. Not only is it bad for the composition, but it also makes your tree look like we're looking at a cross section. There should be some branches coming towards us, which would also have snow on them. Depending on the angle we're seeing this tree from, these snow clumps could be anything from squat square-ish shapes to long vertical rectangles. I'm guessing the squares are more likely.

By the way, the forums have a zoom feature so you don't need to post pre-zoomed versions. Click to zoom in, ctrl+click to zoom out.

I think the newest version looks good! Definitely reads like a snow-covered spruce, and the raised contrast helps (even at 1x, and definitely looks better at 3x).
Speaking of contrast, because the dark greens contrast so much with the snow, they all read as the same colour. You could easily reduce them all to one or two colours without any noticeable difference, even at 3x. The dark greens only become discernible around 5x or so.

Depending on how the rest of your game looks, maybe you could make the snow shadows more blue? Blue shadows will lend your game a sunny day feeling (blue shadows are the result of a clear sky creating a sky-blue ambience). If your game has falling snow or is otherwise meant to have an overcast feel, then these greyer shadows are better.

Also, just in case this becomes relevant as you make more snow objects/tiles: don't be too afraid of letting the snow on your trees blend into the ground-snow a little. That's quite normal IRL, and you have enough of the tree structure visible that it'll still read as "snowy tree against snowy background".

I fixed the over-sized branch!


Glad to hear it!!


Alright, I merged some colours, and pushed the lighter colours up.

Absolutely! They already are, that's just a mockup shadow I painted. The shadows are handled with code :3


What happened to the rest of your post? You had loads of great ideas of other trees to add!

I'm sorry for long replies, I'm super busy, and today my computer wouldn't even start up without some severe issue like no sound or programs not opening...

I do read your replies basically within the half hour they're posted. But building up a reply with all your improvements has to fit in with an already overfilled schedule! I'm not ignoring you, and I'm endlessly grateful for the effort you're putting in to help!

I'm just surprised you didn't say anything about the shadow direction contradicting massively with light source xD

Looks nice now :)

I think we have very different definitions of what "hyper realistic" means in the context of pixel art xP But no matter.

You should post a mock-up with your current assets in context. It would be much easier to give good suggestions then. Moreover, depending on the context, the critique for your existing stuff could change. For example, your tree is drawn as a side view, but the shadow suggests that it's meant to be more of a 3/4 RPG view (assuming the ground is meant to be flat), so you might have a mismatch there.

I don't remember all the suggestions I posted, so I might be missing some, but I added a few more to make up for it:
- Different heights and widths
- Different shapes. Have some trees that are wider at the bottom, have some that are top-heavy.
- Some trees tilt. That might be hard to show in the scale you're using, but it's something to consider. When the tilt is due to wind, magic explosions, etc, the trees will tend to lean in the same direction. When the tilt is due to unstable ground, the tilt will be random.
- In areas that get frequent strong winds from a consistent direction, trees will often have fewer (or no!) branches on the windward side (example).
- Some trees, especially ones in denser/darker forests, lose their bottom branches because light doesn't reach them. The leaves/needles and thinner branches fall off, but the thicker parts stay.
- Some trees have bare branches on top because of frosts and harsh winds. Even cold-tolerant species will sometimes have dead tops.
- Dead trees! Sometimes trees die (disease, root damage, etc) but stay standing until the wind or some other force topples them. Dead trees often lose their bark (both because it falls off and because animals eat it), so they'll often be the colour of aged wood (usually various warm greys, but that depends on the tree species). The bark is lost gradually over time, so you should have some trees with more/less bark remaining.
- Dead trees that have fallen! These are especially common in old, wild forests where they have not been burned away by forest fires or taken by humans.
- Fallen dead trees often serve as habitats for younger trees, as well as moss. It's rare to find a bare fallen tree, unless it fell recently.
- When wind fells a tree, it could tear it out with the roots, so some of your fallen trees could have roots still attached and visible. Some might break because the trunk is weaker than the roots, in which case you should have a visible jagged stump nearby.
- If humans cut trees down in the area, have some stumps that reflect that . When a tree is chopped down it leaves a pointed stump (common for thinner trees), and when a tree is sawed, it leaves a flat stump. With your scale, pointed stumps might be hard to distinguish from jagged stumps, so if you want to make it clear that some stumps are the result of human work, stick to a jagged-flat contrast.
- This applies to all assets, not just trees: Detail variation isn't very noticeable. If the overall size, shape and colours look similar, the variation is likely to go unnoticed. Focus on making lots of very different versions first, then create subtly differing ones if you have areas where the repetition remains an issue.

Automatically tilting the trees doesn't look good because when trees tilt, their branches still grow upwards, and the tree is still rooted normally What you have doesn't look natural because the whole tree is tilted rather than just the trunk (also most are tilted too far than you normally get). If you want tilting trees, you'd need new assets for them. I don't think this game needs that though.

I'm not a fan of the style you're going for, so I won't comment on things relating to that, but I will comment on your assets:
I think the grass could use a little texture. The trees, grass, etc are very detailed, so the grass looks like you forgot to texture it. Plus, a little texture will help your blocky duckling stand out even more, since it'll be the only untextured thing on the screen. Just keep the texture subtle. Maybe add some dirt patches and areas of different types of grass, moss, etc? Forests seldom have a consistent ground cover, it varies a lot based on the microclimates.

You mentioned you wanted the trees to look flat like cardboat cutouts, but to me they just look like they're unintentionally bad. Either give them form but then treat them as very pretty cardboard cutouts (as far as the geometry and shadowcasting does), or make them obviously cartoony. Whatever you do should look intentional.

The subtle variation works well and is important, I'm just saying that overall things still feel "samey" because the shapes, colours, etc have very little variation. It's better to have a tree species in 5 different sizes with 3 subtly different versions each than to have it in 3 sizes with 5 versions of each, even though the number of overall versions is the same.

Old tree:


New ideas and experiments:


I hope it looks a little less unintentionally bad now :3

EDIT: That's weird, the shadow seems to be the same...? I'll have to look into that

Since you're going for that realistic feel mixed with pixel graphics, I suggest blurring the cast shadows, so that they're smooth, like in that Minecraft picture you posted.