Cel shader scene lighting

1. i think the normal cellshader from the wiki wont change the shadows with dynamic lights, it only uses the sunlight i think. but every model has its own self shadow with the toonshader, so you should use MDL Geometry to get the shadows on the objects. maybe its possible to rewrite the shader so models will be affected by dynamics light.

2. i know your graphic style and your textures. i actually think you dont need any cellshader. your style is perfect like it is, cause you drew all the details and light effects on the textures. it looks a bit like Kingdom Hearts. They dont use any light source either, they actually just bake the light onto the textures and draw the highlights and shadows.

3. your character has solid colors. with a toonshader, it will create more steps to your color, depending on the shadow steps you use (i prefer using only one shadow step). so for example your shirt is blue, and you have 2 shadow steps, your shirt has a blue, dark blue and darker blue color on it. it will look a lot more detailed than solid colors. so you dont actually need to add details onto the model / Textures when you use the shader.

but let me tell you something. i know your games graphic and i tzhink you should keep it like it is. the textures of the houses, woods, bottom, and so on is allready detailed, and the colors fits so nice. you shouldnt use a cellshader at all. just draw details and shadows onto the texture of your character, and keep the graphic look like it is. then even more people can play it, not everyone has a super good graphics card.

Kingdom hearts 1+2 are my favorites games and will ever be. the story, the graphic, the animation, the music, the life in it, its so impressive.

yeah your style is cartoony a lot allready. if you really want to increase it, one thing might help. you should try to bright up your textures and objects, like 100% albedo or the other thing (forgot the name, i stoped gamedesign, so i forgot xD). ahh ambient.. was it? whatever. but this might help, it looks more cartoony then too.

and yeah shaders sucks xD i dont really like shaders. i love those shaders without any puixel or vertex version, cause they run almost everwhere. but im too much in love with bloom shader, heat hazard and cell shader. i love it. but i dont really use cell shader often, dont know why. the 3dgs shaders slows down the game a lot (i think it creates a copy of each model, give it a black texture, scall it and flip the normals) but i love the shadows on it, and i always use vector style for pictures so yeah thats why i love cell shading.

but really, keep your graphic style, and try to bright it up when you want it more cartoony, that might help.
anmd use point shadows

wow we are using the forum nearly in real-time


Yea I think you're right about albedo and ambient-- I've played around with that a lot and it seems to really help. Umumumum I just searched the forum for it, but I can't find anything on point shadows. Could you explain?

Bye!

lol yeah im bored at work so i press the refresh button thousand times per minute 8D

im glad it helped a bit with the ambient and albedo.

yeah sure. point shadow is just a round, black fading sprite, that you use as shadow for your characters, like in cartoons. they only have a black spot under themself which fades out. just create a round black sprite, and place it on the bottom under your player.use it also for ovbjects like trees, pots, and so on i do it in my game too, so you dont need to use stencil shadows or whatever.

AH! Cool! Yeah those look good I've also painted some shadows directly onto the terrain textures themselves, too. Okay that's much easier than what I thought it might be..

I was thinking point shadows were some kind of crazy dynamic light calculating stencil shading lightmap multipass shader thing that would make my head explode

no its a drawn sprite 8D that simple. dont expect me to do complicates stuff, pff im lazy.

i dont know if this helps, i think you even posted on it but heres a link to my cel-shaded game, i think its starting to look ok, and all i had to do is just use the sun, stencil shadows... given tho, that mine is outdoor , i dont know if that matters.

also with those drop shadows (thats what i call the point shadows or whatever) if its going to have toon shader in the game, id have them semi transparent with hard edges tho, cuz the second you use a soft shadow, welll.... just look at the last screen on the second page of the thread i sent you, it just doesnt look right. [image]http://www.coniserver.net/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/673278/an/0/page/0#Post673278[/image]

ello or others, could you add more info about this statement?

"btw, there are ways to create toonscenery as a postprocess"

I can't seem to find helpful info about how to do postprocess effects.

thanks!

Sorry to bring up such an old thread. But I have some similar quips about Toon Shading in general.

I agree with most of what has been said above. However, we have a very strong night scene in a town that's shadowed in tree's. And I really wanted the effect of the main character passing the lanterns on the road...

However, I don't think 8 dynamic lights would be enough, so I'd have to do some sort of static branch with pixel shader 2.0 or such. Think this is a good idea?

Also, there's no BSP geometry in the scene, it's a height map and meshes added in. Thoughts would be appreciated!