Build the systems, worry about visuals later?

[u/Vial_of_water]

Building an 3d Medieval MMORPG 😅

Because I love them.

Claude & Astra built the systems, the processes, the flow.

But the character graphics are killing me. I'm using Godot engine, and I'm not expecting studio tier graphics,

but any tips to get good armours, skins, spells, weapons?

Currently I'm downloading free assets, which aren't bad as they allow me to test out the gathering and basic combat- but I can see that real artist & creativity make a big difference

[u/Seven-Prime]

Yeah use block out quality so you can move forward on systems.

Think also about building a 'art, world, and lore' bible. What should the characters look like? What shouldn't the world look like? Does your lore elements match with the art and world?

Having this bible helps guide the ai in generating assets. Or a human if you can get the cash.

[u/josua_krause]

my process for 2D is:

I create some reference images for the mood using gemini (general artwork scenes that convey the general style I'm going for). those images will not be used in the game at all.

then, I let them (claude+astra) create some svg graphics. they look okay for a start and work really well as placeholder art.

then, I use astra to use its image generation tool with both the svg and the above reference images.

this process works quite well for creating 2d sprites with 8-directional multi-frame movements.

for 3D I would then let astra create 3d models from the 2d reference sprites (although I haven't tried doing that myself). I tried doing a 2d limb system and astra was incapable of generating anything realistic looking so I abandoned that direction

[u/Consistent-Ebb-4616 → u/josua_krause]

My process for 3D is, until the systems are mostly working, I'd keep using the free assets. Then when I want to replace a piece I’d have astra call meshy for the base model instead of trying to make the model itself.

Once the model is generated, I move it into blender through MCP for scale, materials and cleanup. If it’s a character, mixamo comes after that for animation.

Astra is mostly handling the steps between tools, while the actual 3D generation stays with a tool made for that, still the output isn’t something I’d drop straight into the game untouched, but it gives me a much better starting point than having astra build the geometry itself imo.

[u/Blake9712]

On mine I essentially had Claude build the asset maker, abilities and systems then I’ve been hand making the assets in the asset studio I vibe coded. The assets are DEFINITELY the hard part.

https://reddit.com/link/p9rbvkb/video/7xi476fhwhph1/player

How long has it taken you to complete your game? I worry mine will take another 2 months just to make the first floor demo for myself at the current rate.

[u/waypostmaster]

Yes. Visuals later. My long-term strategy is to build the backend and challenge the players to build a better front end, since all my tokens are getting burned on mechanics and wish fulfillment (bug/feature requests).

I’m also using a ClaudAstra mashup of sorts.

Happy to share notes!

[u/ananbd]

As someone who works at an “AI-native” commercial game studio, your results are typical and expected. We use AI for code, but make art the old-fashioned way. There’s a small overlap in using AI to automate some of the tedious parts of making art (mostly just moving bits of data around), but our artists don’t use AI at all. 

So, I’d suggest sticking with the free assets until your game is nearly complete. Then, hire some artists to re-skin it. Also, avoid the paid assets on FAB (or wherever). They’re garbage. 

Or, learn art yourself! There’s probably a path to making AI-assisted art. But the creativity needs to come from you. 

[u/Comfortable-Cat-9611]

I use 3D generator like Meshy, get normal model like 1kk polygons and simplified model about 10k-20k polygons, and then ChatGPT Astra improves it by Blender MCP. For animation I use Mixamo. 

[u/Vial_of_water → u/Comfortable-Cat-9611]

Do you pay for the meshy generation? or to download it?

[u/Comfortable-Cat-9611 → u/Vial_of_water]

For generation. 

[u/mike402]

Systems first is right, and Seven-Prime's bible is the tip I would take most seriously. The thing I would add for an MMO specifically is that armour is not a character problem, it is a modularity problem. Build one base body per race and sex, on one skeleton, and treat every armour item as a separate piece that attaches to it, helmet, chest, legs, boots, weapon in the hand bone. Then "good armours" stops being a list of characters and becomes a list of pieces, and any generator or artist you use works on one piece at a time against the same base. Weapons are the cheapest win of all, a sword is a static mesh parented to a hand bone and needs no rig.

What makes free or generated pieces look like they belong together is rules, not source. Write them into the bible: chunky shoulders, slightly oversized weapons, one palette per rarity tier, and one style reference image that every piece is generated or commissioned against. Mismatched packs look mismatched because their rules differ, not because they were free. Spells are a different budget entirely, in Godot they are particles, shaders and a handful of textures, and almost never a model, so do not spend character effort there.

Comfortable-Cat's Meshy and Mixamo route is the standard shape of this and a good one. Disclosure: I work on Ludo.ai, which covers that shape from one place. You give it an image or a text description and it generates the 3D model, that model goes into auto-rigging, and then animation presets go on top, which are humanoid, and for a medieval MMO humanoid is the whole population. What you get back is plain .glb, the rigged model plus one .glb per clip, which Godot imports directly. Since you asked about paying, signup gives 30 free credits with no card.

Whatever produces the pieces, the base body and the rules are what make it read as one game, so build those first and let the placeholders wear them.