These are sketch models for the game I'm working on. I'm not a texture artist (actually i'm not even a modeller, i'm a programmer) so any advice would be welcome. All of the art will be cell shaded in the end product.
Not bad at all for an engineer! Just as a quick question, though: do you have a cell shader for your game? I have to ask because it's usually not until the "too late mark" that people catch the fact that Maya/Max/XSI's cell shaders are not designed to run in real-time.
Also for critique, can you post a wireframe of your vehicle? Perhaps a grey-shaded mesh in addition to that?
The toon shader in blender is a lot like their GLSL toon shader (except for the auto-smoothing) which runs quite fast.
I'm hoping to take some hints from that to create a GLSL toon shader in-game. Then we just need the edge shader.
One thing I've seen used for the outline is to duplicate the geometry and apply a solid black texture (or whatever color you want the edges to be), scale it out along the normals a small amount, reverse the normals, and let standard backface culling remove the extra polys. I don't know how the cost of this technique compares to your other options, but I thought I would throw it out there.
It took me a while to get the style down, this is the first ship with the 'wow' factor (showed it to friends, got 'that looks cool' reaction) and it's about the 4th fighter class ship i've done so far. It took a long time to master the subsurf modifier in blender, which is how i do all my detail (smooth curved surfaces and sharp edges) This one is the first dedicated space vehicle (not a hybrid fighter jet/space vehicle)
@Dado: I've been zeroing in on the cell shaded material, the gray ones above are regular blender diffuse/specular, the one with the star field is closer, and the guns in this one feel even closer. In game, we will also have to figure out light sources, sensor overlays, and hopefully hdr lighting. (and still have it look good) and the hull of the ship is supposed to be a matte gray low radar visibility.
In other words, 'you should have seen how bad it was before'
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Also for critique, can you post a wireframe of your vehicle? Perhaps a grey-shaded mesh in addition to that?
Good luck!
I'm hoping to take some hints from that to create a GLSL toon shader in-game. Then we just need the edge shader.
SubSurf mesh (Subsurf level 3)
Actual mesh (SubSurf off)
SV1 dedicated space vehicle
In other words, 'you should have seen how bad it was before'