Cel-shading for my game

#1 You've been looking for weeks? There is a toon shading resource for TGE... Granted it doesn't work very well, but it is a start.

#2 Thanks for the response; it has been weeks, mainly because I thought the rendering was supposed to come from the art program, rather than the actual game engine. Sorry about that; I am rather new at this and it is a little tricky for me.

Also, when you refer to the toon shader as a resource for the TGE, do you mean that it is done through coding in it, or as a downloadable add-on (I'm betting more on the former, but I'm still unsure as to how a lot of this works)?

Also, do you know if the Torque Shader Engine would provide more options into this? I read through some of the features of it, and I'm not too sure.

Thanks again.

#3 Not sure if this is what you are looking for but, check these out I am trying to figure out how to do it in truespace/gamespace but haven't had much luck with the push modifier. Can't seem to find something to scale by normals yet.
www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=22846
www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=24663

And here is the code based cell shading info.
www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=10936

Neither of these are actual cell shading mind you to get a real cell shaded look you would need tse and program a shader.

#4 @Danny: Cel shading is a rendering technique, TGE uses a photorealism approach, which means it renders stuff to look as 'real' as possible. What you want to do involves changing the way TGE renders stuff, that would mean modiying all the objects that do rendering to use some form of cell shading render technique, with TSE this is "easier" since a simple Cell-shading shader could be applied to all the materials you want to look cell shading. I say "easier" because coding shaders is not easy.

Regards,
Xavier.

#5 Noone has thus far gotten any kind of god looking cel shading throug hcode... Other then Dogs of Prey... Most people do it through art around here (which I think is a cop out) ...

#6 Thanks for the help, everyone.

#7 Thanks for the help, everyone.

#8 I wouldn't say no-one has gotten good cel shading through code. I think this looks alright.

#9 How is that cel-shaded?
No offence ment...
Toby.

#10 What do you mean?

This is cel-shaded with texturing, instead of it simply doing gradients of a single color it computes the gradient shade and then combines it with the underlying texture of the model.

#11 If you want a cheap and cheerful way to do it, you can clone your mesh and invert it, scale it up a little and apply a black texture to it. Thats how they did the outlines on the jet set radio games.

To do the shading, you can use an environment map with a gradient that determines how the object is shaded. I used the technique for my mini racing game. If you use a linear gradient light at the top, dark at the bottom, and use a spherical environment, it looks a bit like realtime self shadowing and highlighting.

I have a fairly bright and cheerful look to most of my Indie games and use these techniques extensively.

Today I'd combine both tricks to create a pretty cool cell look that will run on old DX7 hardware.

here's the outline effect in Aerial Antics


and the environment map shading effect in my Mini Clubman racing game

#12 Those are cool looking pics Adrian. We've gotten Cel-Shading working in the Shader Engine but have been having trouble getting the shading to work correctly in TGE. I'll take a look at the environment mapping method. Thanks for the info.