Epsilon Indi was created as an entry for the "Indirect Control Jam". But at the end of the Jam the game looked like this:

The basic game mechanic was working, but the visual appearance could be improved. :)

I decided to create the models for units and buildings on my own in Blender. (For the first time - up to now I always relied on ready-made assets or primitive models.) This turned out to be far more difficult than I expected. Especially the workflow from Blender to Game Engine (in my case Unity) was far from user friendly.

I started from blender with this model:

On the left side the rendered version of the model I created in Blender. In the center the same model as a grid (this has ~25000 triangles). On the right side the model I am using in the game with 250 triangles.

What then came was pure agony: I wanted to bake the hi-resolution model to textures for the low-res model. But it turned out that the functionality for this is present in Blender, but unfortunately not working properly for all of the necessary textures (normal map, metallic map, albedo, emission, ambient occlusion). After multiple days of trial and error I found the Blender Add-On I needed: "Principled Baker". This is free to use and does a perfect job to bake all the maps. So finally I got my first model into the game:

For my first model I am quite satisfied with the result. (To spice it up I added some animations in the shader for the emissive parts.)

By the way: This should represent an alien artifact ... the probably most simple model in the game. :)

To be continued ...