GTA: Cel Shading?

[Mark]

(WIP)

 

I'm just wondering, would it be possible to make a cel-shaded mod? The main hinderance I see is the culling on the faces on vehicles, as after all, faces on those are double sided.

 

I see the simplest way to make objects cel shaded is to simply make a shell on the outside of them, re-oriented, and made totally black (with absolutely no spec highlight on of course), and a little pre-lighting for a more cartoony look to it all. Therefore the problem of double sided faces on vehicles kinda needs addressing. The models need to be cartoony, with nice thick black lines on parts of it etc etc.

 

For buildings, I don't see it being a problem, but I almost see the idea of having normal buldings but cel shaded vehicles quite fun.

 

I know this was brought up like 4 years ago with GTA:III, but I wonder, considering how much more we know about car and map modding, if it's more feasable this time round to make a Cel Shaded Mod.

 

Anyone else up for testing things out? I'm making a model for MI at the moment, like a knock-off of an L-39C Albatross military jet trainer, which I'm willing to experiment with due to it's low-polycount nature.

 

Feedback from other people willing to test this idea/people who have already tried would be great, and of course those who know massive amounts about all aspects of modelling would be great (looking at DexX, STM, Steve-M, illspirit etc lol, as usual).

Edited October 25, 2006 by GTAuron

[MoeRonimoe]

I tried it (http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=252933)

 

And the result ist good as long as you don't use the things ingame. Standobjects like houses or a placed weapon look good, but after picking them up the hull is inverted again ;(

 

I think with cars it would have the same result

[Mark]

Hmm, thanks for the topic, given me a line of info to go chase, search didn't turn up much.

 

That's what I mean though, would it be possible to create a program that would edit the RW engine to implement face culling on vehicles and weapons etc.

[Rob.]

I'm a complete nOOb when it comes to putting them into the game, but i know how to edit textures and alike.

 

Anyway, here's my wild guess, could you not edit the textures by, where the textures join outlining the join with a black line on the .TXD. Thus when the game joins to the two sides together, it looks cel shaded, if you know what i mean?

[MI7]

I'm a complete nOOb when it comes to putting them into the game, but i know how to edit textures and alike.

 

Anyway, here's my wild guess, could you not edit the textures by, where the textures join outlining the join with a black line on the .TXD. Thus when the game joins to the two sides together, it looks cel shaded, if you know what i mean?

Yeah I too am a complete idiot with advanced stuff and doing "proper" cell shading and such.

 

However, that game "Ultimate Spiderman" that used Cel Shading in it's textures to make it look like a Comic Book. This is a wild guess here but could the same techniques be applied to the TXDs in SA to make them look Cel Shaded? I guess you'd have to replace every TXD which would be time consuming, but it may work, I dunno.

[DexX]

I don't want to give you any false hope, but you might be interested in checking this out:

DirectX tweaker

I mention this because it has post-overlay effects, that can do stuff like this when you run gta with it:

 

 

Modules to load:Post Filter

Effect:Inky

 

It might be the closest we can come at the moment to any kind of true cel shading, and even then its "iffy". still better than nothing though.

[Mark]

@Rob and M17: Texturing objects to complete the cel shaded look is no problem, the issue comes with the black outlines needed, which unfortunately cannot be done with texturing, as a permanent outline would be needed. Thanks for the help though.

 

@DexX: Oooh, I'll check it out. I'd rather have an issue that's less orientated around this kinda of method though, but i'll play with the options, see if I can't get a little better cel shaded look. Guess it's something to play with lol, thanks.

 

Has anyone ever experimented with trying to stop the renderware engine producing double sided polygons on vehicles etc?

 

Also, I haven't got any buildings in game since VC, i take it still renders those 1 sided yeah? I spose I can play about with buildings for the moment. I'll so read up on the RW engine.

[Zak]

well.. endo cellshaded racer, didnt he? maybe he might be able to help.. wonderful idea, btw.

[Mark]

Well, getting the impression of cel shading is easy, it's all just done with the modelling side of things, and hoping that the game engine you use renders things the same way as your modelling program. Racers a lot more flexible than the SA game engine as regards this (afaik) thus racers not impossible to cel shade lol.