Using 3d Models to get a 2d Manga Look

JustColorado

I am thinking about doing a little cartoon stylized game.  3d but made to look like a 2d
visual novel.  
I have made a few 3d games before, but when I look at the character drawing style of
Clannad.  I see a lot of things that I don't know how to accomplish with 3d.  For example a
strong outline, the way the shadows appear, sparse detail consistency, lighting on the hair
would i use real reflection for the eyes, etc.  

Here is a really old post of somebody else trying to pull it off in UDK and it came out
pretty poor.  https://forums.epicgames.com/threads/923181-Anime-Visual-Novel-style-shading-The-Result

is it even possible to get the quality the same?

Does anyone have any experience / guidance building 3d games/chars stylized to look
like 2d manga art in a real time rendering engine?  If so can you offer guidance or point
me in the right direction.

Yadoob

Hi, I've put Guilty Gear knowledge into a pdf that is focused on Shaders :


https://www.dropbox.com/s/65cwf6kjuezhwdl/GuilltyGearXrd_shader.pdf?dl=0

I think you can also find the Guilty Gear presentation video that have a lot of informations aswell.

RN

There's this post by Chev where he (or she?) mentions how the outlines are done in Guilty Gear Xrd (check the bottom of the linked post):
http://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2099538/#Comment_2099538

It's that classic method of expanding the mesh and rendering it as flat black, then overlaying the original mesh on top. I remember reading in that thread about them using a simpler mesh for the outlines, and they use vertex colours to control how that expansion happens, the thickness of it for example (so you can have that manga hand-drawn line weight quality).

There's more information here:
https://simonschreibt.de/gat/cell-shading/

JustColorado

Thank You!  This should get me started.
(Nice shadow trick with the Normal Map)

Scruples

@Yadoob thanks for sharing, neat techniques in there.