Cartoon shaders?

#1 Search for "Cel Shading". A lot of people have done it. I personally tried it but had some issues with my video card. From what I see it's quite easy though

#2 Hello,

The short answer is yes. From what I've read, it's not too difficult to do. I haven't tried it yet, though. It looks cool.

There is a code-centric way to accomplish this and a modeling-only way.

Here are some inspiring links on the topic . . .

www.garagegames.com/mg/snapshot/view.php?qid=1093

www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=24663

www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=6659

www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=22846

There are other good links on the site but some of them are locked to the general public (SDK ownership required).

Good luck and have fun,

Aaron E.


[Edit: added an extra thought and fixed a typo.]

#3 I am just collecting informations, so I dont waste my money :) But I am pretty sure I will buy it if I solve folowing:
about MMORPG, is it required only to mod existing torque netcode or create/implement whole new netcode?

#4 I'm clueless about MMOs, but you might want to search the site for Minions of Mirth or anything with Josh Ritter in it. :) He and his team created an MMO with Torque. His blog entries are pretty informative.

Here's a link to get you started.

www.garagegames.com/blogs/4280/9917

#5 There's a MMORPG kit at mydreamrpg.com, costs about 10 bucks a month. Still in the works though if I remember correctly

#6 Can you please answer my question :)

#7 Jope, I'm not sure you understand the nature of networking in an MMO.

As it stands, the Torque networking layer IS sufficient to handle any number of simultaneous client connections - there are no hard coded limitations... theoretically.

The limitations come into play when considering the sheer volume of data the servers must handle at a given time. In other words, there's quite a bit of data flying back and forth so the only way to overcome network latency is to throw a boat load of bandwidth and procesing power at the situation.

This, of course is cost prohibitive and is the primary reason we typically only see major development studios making major forays into the world of MMO's.

In short, there's no "magic" netwroking schema on the backend of an MMO, it's your typical garden variety networking code for the most part, so if there was a specific optimization your project needed, you could modify the existing TGE networking code to do just that.

If you're serious about wanting to develop for an MMO, maybe have a look into the Kaneva game engine to get your feet wet. Of course, if you're new to game development, I'd encourage you to start with soemthing much, much smaller first.

#8 I'm not new at game development, just wanted to see do I need to edit torque necode or create a new one. Thanks for detailed reply

#9 TSE is what you want to use for this. It fully supports creation of custom toon shaders with full SM 1-3 support.

#10 Possibly. David Michael has done some pretty nice work on cel-shading using standard OpenGL in TGE.

(Shape out lining and shading resources respectively, obviously viewable for TGE owners only though)
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=10368
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=10318

This is a pic of what his stuff was looking like (hope he doesn't mind me linking to it)

#11 I hear Cel Shading in Torque can cause some huge performance issues... But, I don't know personally.

#12 @Paul: No problem at all. I'm hoping the resources get approved soon...

@Mark: There is a mild performance hit since you end up running through the geometry two additional times (once for the shading and again for the outlining)--but the hit doesn't seem too bad. I keep wondering if that would be solved (at least some) by hooking into TGE's multitexturing more completely.

@Jope: The last I knew, TGE supports something like 64 or 128 client connections on a server. That's "out of the box". To go beyond that, you would need to modify the networking. How much would you need to modify it? I have no idea. It's not something I've researched (50-100 on a server fits my plans exactly).

-David

#13 I hope it can be enhanced, because Torque looks simply awsome with cel shading..

#14 Looking forward to your resource David Looks great! :)

#15 Torque cel-shading is awesome!

So, should I buy Torque and modify network engine or get Kaneva for MMO?

#16 Jope,

That question is best answered by you - what is the scope of your project. How many subscribers is your goal and... how many concurrent network connections would you need to maintain on average?

Do some research and, if your goal is something you could afford to host yourself - meaning servers and bandwidth, etc., then grab Torque and go for it. If it isn't, then Kaneva is a complete hosting solution as well as a development platform - but as always, read there licensing agreement and understand it thoroughly before commiting to use it.

~ Hope that helps. =)

#17 Yeah it helped very much :)

for example, if I have dual xeon 2.8 and 2gb ram, will it be able to handle 5k players if netcode is optimal?

#18 Firstly, that cel-shading stuff hits performance pretty hard......I'd also like to point out that their are TWO parts to 'cel-shading' the SHADING and the OUTLINES, the outlining can be done without modifying code, you just need to make a black "shell" and inverse the direction the polys are facing, this helps avoid the same performance hit.....or so i read.......i have yet to try the code editing procedure. This does require a bit more work though to ensure that the outline looks consistantly nice from all angles.
Then there is the shading itself, as far as i know there is no way to cheat this, u need the code alterations.

Secondly,
MY GOD!! what's with all these people wanting to make MMOs? I mean, i know they're cool, but a normal RPG is time consuming enough......I guess cuz WoW inspired people.....still, did they suddenly think that because the grade a teams Blizzard has were able to make an awesome MMO, THEY would be able to also? I guess should save it for another thread.....

#19 "MY GOD!! what's with all these people wanting to make MMOs?"
<< this is tippical example of ridged developer, they think they have all the intelligence of the world.

We already made one sucessful MMORPG, but browser based 2D. So successful that we own our own servers and alot of extra profit each month, so we would like to invest in making exact game in 3D. Is there any problem about that?
Also, we are not "all these people". We are highly skilled C/C++ developers.
It's sad that I always have to find somebody like Anquel if I'm informing about developing 3D MMO on some forum and every time I have to waste time on replying.

PLEASE! Dont spam this topic with questions like "do you know how expensive is that"! We are extremely conscious of that. And like "do you know how many people works on projects like that", "how much skill do you need".

#20 His point was that every second developer in the world wants to make one and the forums been flooded by a lot of hopefuls recently, not that nobody can achieve it.
There is a large resource repository for Torque-based mmorpgs at mydreamrpg.com/, provided by Dreamer with full acess for $10 a month.

An example of a free MMOG made with Torque can be found at The Pussycat Dolls lounge.