How To Achieve A 2D Look With 3D Smoke

Sil Roosenstein shared a sneak peek of his upcoming short film, demonstrating how he turns 3D VFX into a 2D-inspired look. For this smoke-heavy shot, he created the smoke in JangaFX's EmberGen, brought everything together in Blender, and polished it in After Effects.

To maintain fast iteration while achieving a stylized aesthetic, everything was rendered in Eevee. During compositing, he applied a Kuwahara filter along with a depth map to enhance the background's stylization. The smoke was rendered separately, providing better control over the final image.

The artist plans to release a more in-depth breakdown of this technique soon. The short film is a collaboration with Jesper Vlietstra, so in the meantime, you can check out the work of both artists below:

Looking for 3D art with a 2D look? Have a look at Jason Chan's Reze and these projects from Alena Shunenkova, Èric Zwatrzko i Pou, and Mathieu Mistler:

Also, subscribe to our Newsletter and join our 80 Level Talent platform, follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, and Instagram, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.

Are you a fan of what we do here at 80 Level? Then make sure to set us as a Preferred Source on Google to see more of our content in your feed.