How Lunarium Blends Hand-Painted 2D Art With 3D Environments

August 13, 2026 - 17:11

The upcoming isometric action RPG Lunarium has been turning heads with its distinct visual style, which looks like a living oil painting. Game director Jixiang recently broke down the studio's approach to blending traditional 2D artistry with modern 3D technology, and the process is more layered than most players might expect.

At the core of Lunarium's look is a simple rule: every texture starts as a hand-painted piece of art. The team creates detailed 2D paintings for characters, props, and terrain surfaces, then maps those images onto 3D geometry. This gives the world a flat, storybook feel when viewed from the game's fixed camera angle, but allows for real depth and parallax as players move through the environment.

The tricky part comes with lighting. Standard 3D lighting can wash out the subtle brushstrokes and make the painted textures look plastic. To avoid that, Jixiang's team built a custom lighting rig inside Unity that treats light as a soft, ambient wash rather than a hard directional source. They also use a technique called vertex painting to tint the ground and walls by hand, so shadows feel painted in rather than calculated.

Jixiang also mentioned that the team relies heavily on Unity's shader graph to create a subtle outline effect around objects. This keeps the 2D and 3D elements from clashing, making the whole scene feel cohesive. The result is a game that looks like a moving illustration, but still offers the spatial freedom of a fully 3D world. For players who value art direction over raw fidelity, Lunarium appears to be shaping up as a standout title.