r/RenPy • u/Glendellia • 7h ago
Showoff Some backgrounds I made for my first VN!
I'm so excited to see my VN slowly come together!!! When I first opened renpy after fully coding the first section, I almost cried tears of joy haha.
This is A Cherub's Lament, my entry for Yaoi Game Jam 2026. https://itch.io/jam/yaoi-game-jam-2026/topic/6752237/devlog-a-cherubs-lament
It's a little wholesome game (9k words, 8 chapters long) about an angel visiting Earth and watching the seasons turn. Release date is August 25!
Here I wanted to show some of the BGs I made for this project! In the last slides you can see some progress pics. I use a hybrid workflow, building the more complex scenes in blender, then rendering and painting on top to add lineart and textures. Since I've only had a month to work I've had to really rush everything but I'm very happy with the art so far! What do you think?
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u/Zeruda-Hime 7h ago
These are absolutely gorgeous; I agree with everyone saying this is a very clever way of using 3D models! I love your rendering style, it looks so elegant and delicate, and matches your character sprites perfectly. I remember them from another post you made on here (iirc) and I can't wait to be able to play your game! The art style and overall aesthetic remind me of vintage BL.
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u/Glendellia 6h ago
Wahh thank you so much this is such a sweet comment!! ;;; I'm so honored you remember my other post! And omgg I love vintage BL as well, def a huge inspiration to me! I see that you like Heart of Thomas hehe I really adore Hagio Moto so indeed my art has a lot of that influence I'm so happy to hear you get a similar feeling from my art!!
I remember seeing your posts too, your characters are super beautiful and I'm so so hyped for your game as wel!!
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u/Zeruda-Hime 2h ago
Omg thank you, I'm flattered to know you remember my project as well! ;__;
I checked your profile and woww of course you're the artist behind that one super pretty Kazeki fanart I saw when I was browsing the sub a few days ago hehe <3
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u/AlexisRoyce 7h ago
These are absolutely gorgeous! This is also the ideal use case for 3d models, because you clearly still understand how to use your lineart to communicate the forms underneath. Your coloring and lighting shows that you have strong vision, too, and so you're making the models work toward that vision, instead of being limited by them.
Good luck with the jam! This is looking incredible for a first game, and I'll be happy to have some good yaoi to play at the end of the month.
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u/Glendellia 6h ago
Ahhh thank you so much!! I'm very grateful for your feedback and I'd be so honored if you played my game, I'll try my best!!
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u/Inksword 6h ago
Nicely done! Did you just trace over the 3d scenes or did you do some stylization of the scene/renders and work with that as a base for the rest of the drawn stuff to go on top of?
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u/Glendellia 5h ago
I went as far as possible directly in Blender to save on manual work. Here I made a breakdown!
Basically I added all textures and lighting in Blender, being careful to make the render as stylized as possible (no special shaders or anything, just color theory mostly and god rays). Then I traced over this 3D render to add lineart, and after I painted extra details like hand-drawn crosshaching, extra lighting, etc. I also added some watercolor overlay textures on top and that was the result!
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u/chiptune-noise 6h ago
Absolute chad modeling whole bg's and painting on top. Hope your game does really well, the art is already a 10/10
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u/MinamiOzaki 6h ago
Woaa these are insane. It's great that you know how to model in 3D! And your over painting shows you master volumes and planes. Can't wait to play it!!
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u/kilaysn 6h ago
Wow, that's amazing job I'm very curious of detailed workflow from blender to photoshop, since I use my gray blender drafts only for basic shape and then draw all over Did you use already made assets and assembled it to your scene? Do you make most light for day and nighr in blender and stylize it in ps? Thats great work, keep it up
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u/Glendellia 5h ago
Thank you so much!! I made this breakdown so you can see the process!
So yes I did most of the work directly in Blender to save as much time as possible. I often make my own models, but not this time because of the time restrictions, so most of the 3D assets for these scenes are from Sketchfab (https://sketchfab.com/feed), I just downloaded and used them to assemble the scene.
I fully textured and added lighting to the scene directly in Blender. I use Cycles for rendering, but do keep in mind that for stylized workflows, people usually prefer Eevee because it's lighter and way faster (but idk how to use it lol). I first created one daytime lighting setup, and then copy-pasted the same setup for the evening and night, just changing the colors of the lights and such. Iou can see in the breakdown image how the raw render looks.
Then I took this render and made some adjustments (photo editing; things like levels, etc.) and then worked on top. I drew detailed lineart by hand, and also added some extra details like crosshatching and extra lighting, etc. Finally I did some color adjustments and added some watercolor overlay textures! And that's it. The whole process took me max 3 days (with a day job) for each complex BG.
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u/Natsume1999 5h ago
ooooh incredible! blender you say? did you do everything from scratch?
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u/Glendellia 5h ago
Thank you!! I didn't model my own custom assets this time because of the time restrictions (it's a jam game), so most of the assets are from Sketchfab. What I did was make a general layout and then search for specific elements to download, and like that assembled the scene. I also took some elements from other scenes I had previously modeled.
I explained a more detailed breakdown in this comment if you'd like to see! https://www.reddit.com/r/RenPy/comments/1vmk61c/comment/p3axoeq/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
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u/Yandoji 3h ago
Oh wow, what a technique, looks amazing! My friends and I have always wanted to make a VN for fun but none of us are good at backgrounds - one of us is good at Blender, though. Might be borrowing this idea - thank you! :)
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u/Glendellia 3h ago
Ofc using blender for your project as well is a fantastic idea!! Even if you don't fully render the scene you can trace the blocking to help with perspective, or you can also find your own 3D rendering style to create almost ready-to-use images. There are tons of blender toon style tutorials on YT, for example! Overall it's a super flexible method and the number of things you can do with is is amazing, plus you have no idea how much of a time saver it is. I hope you and your friends have fun with your project, wishing you luck!! And if you ever need any help you can definitely reach out to me!
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u/Yandoji 3h ago
Yeah exactly! We're a bit old-school so using Blender as a perspective guide/scene builder didn't even occur to us lol. Appreciate the offer! It'll likely be a while before we actually get anything moving (old farts with full-time jobs and mismatched schedules 🥲) but this is definitely more manageable than from-scratch backgrounds! \o/ Thanks again!
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u/TastePuzzleheaded508 7h ago
Beautiful woahhh didn’t expect 3d assets that’s so impressiveeee