Wintermute Engine Forum

Wintermute Engine => Feature requests, suggestions => Topic started by: Andrej on August 24, 2007, 04:19:05 AM

Title: Toon Outline
Post by: Andrej on August 24, 2007, 04:19:05 AM
It would be really nice if there could be some sort of toon outline option (that's what it's called in Maya anyway-- it's just a black border that surrounds your 3d character, often used in conjunction with cell shades.

When I originally started my project I had thought it was a feature mostly because of this "Fairy tales about Toshechka and Boshechka" screen: http://dead-code.org/graphics/tib01.jpg

Upon close inspection the characters were rendered from a separate 3d program into sprites...but I was wondering, would this be a very difficult feature to add?
Title: Re: Toon Outline
Post by: Drax on August 24, 2007, 07:22:23 AM
I haven't played the game, but do you really think the characters are 3d ones and rendered?
I looks like they are "traditionally" hand-animated 2D-drawn characters.

It would be great if there's a programm where I can get those sprites.
I can't believe that this is originally 3D an rendered to 2D sprites.
Title: Re: Toon Outline
Post by: jlinam on August 24, 2007, 07:32:25 AM

That kind of outline effect can be done pretty easily in almost any graphics package. I know anime studio (nee Moho) can do it, and I imagine flash can as well. The characters in that screen shot look to me like they were probably done in flash.
Title: Re: Toon Outline
Post by: Mnemonic on August 24, 2007, 03:14:56 PM
Cel-shading for 3D characters would require shaders to run at reasonable speed. That's something WME doesn't support at the time being, but it was one of the motivations behind the recent Direct3D 9 port of WME.
Title: Re: Toon Outline
Post by: Andrej on August 24, 2007, 05:03:48 PM
I don't want cell-shading, just the black outline around real time 3d characters(which Maya considers as separate effects).  Is the black border still considered a shader? 
Title: Re: Toon Outline
Post by: leucome on August 25, 2007, 02:21:10 AM
With 3d caracter you can do a trick to add an outline ... You build you model after you copy you model and push all the face to make it bigger than the original you put a black texture on it and inverce a the faces normal..  this way you see a black line around your model ...The black line came from the bigger black model partialy hidden by your base model  .Not the percfect trick but it work quite good ...

Title: Re: Toon Outline
Post by: SoundGuy on August 25, 2007, 03:08:08 AM
take a look at Zbang :
http://corbomitegames.com/zbang

download the episode 0's  BETA and tell me if this what you want as toon outline for 3d characters.

Oded
Title: Re: Toon Outline
Post by: leucome on August 25, 2007, 10:06:23 PM
Do you use the trick i said for Zbang outline ? Or an other ?
Title: Re: Toon Outline
Post by: SoundGuy on August 26, 2007, 04:11:05 AM
yup
Title: Re: Toon Outline
Post by: Andrej on August 28, 2007, 08:28:39 PM
This is a good solution for an outline...unfortunately all of my characters will have a lot of transparency in their textures--so I think I might see the second (black) model through these transparent sections.  But perhaps not, I have a lot of experimenting in front of me, thanks for the information.
Title: Re: Toon Outline
Post by: PlushDez on September 06, 2007, 11:38:54 AM
To: leucome

 ::thumbup ::thumbupWow!!! Very good trick!  ::thumbup