Help on old Cel Shading Method

[Miraitto]

I remember there was a topic in this forum about adding cel shade outline on your character models by copying and scaling the nif file. But I can't find the right topic. Would anyone point me to the right thread?

[crosspotts1.0]

i never seen it

[Miraitto]

It's an old nifskope tutorial to achieve a cartoony look like XML2.

The effect is very similar to this. But only for your selected nifskoped characters. Not the entire map.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/freedom-force-upgraded-graphics/addons/freedom-force-true-comic-style-reshade

[SickAlice]

I probably won't be much help but maybe a starting point. I don't have  to test that out. What you're talking about in the OP though is the method for making "aura" but with the color black I believe? Depending on your level of skill refer to any Green Lantern type nif on what the settings are. So a custom "black outline aura" for lack of a better would follow suit. If you can't model you'd copy the model inside the nif itself (I would copy the mesh itself and make a double) then increase it by a select amount in scale. Having worked with Lanterns a lot this gets tricky when there's more than one parts. Typically as well I used the method of remaking the models in Blender into very low poly ones first, naturally this is a lot and puts a lot of polys into the game. That's the way I know of. I know games like say the Konami Y2k Ninja Turtles use a secondary model as well but it's just the black outlines. I think it's excessive. For the record at least  standard settings are actually the standard for cel-shading. Most games in that era for home systems based on comics and cartoons used cel-shading/faux cel-shading. Last hunt for backups of tutorials in Mediafire links and such. I'm sure someone or another backed up the tutorial, I just know I don't have it on my hard drive.

[Miraitto]

Maybe I'd settle for the FF Comic Style Reshade. Even though it's not meant for FFvT3R. But it does work.

If only there's an option where only the characters have the black outline. The Hud and some textures with transparency have problems.

Thanks for giving the time to look for the lost tutorial.

[SickAlice]

No I mean that's how to make black outlines. There never was a tutorial. The tutorial is attributed to me but someone just imagined that, I never made a tutorial for auras/outlines until the past couple days in a few threads.

[Miraitto]

It must be dejavu then. I swear I recall someone doing that. Maybe it was you after all this time. Because of the green lantern auras.

[SickAlice]

Pretty much though again I never actually did make a tutorial. I searched and appears a conversation happened in one of the time frames I was travelling the country and thus away from the forum that assumed a had made a tutorial but I never did. As I mentioned elsewhere what I did was try and make auras that every single body type and shape (they aren't visible in the previews but are included with any Lantern type thing I've done) so people could just copy and paste them and wouldn't have to bother with the process.

The process again is pretty simple. Open anything with an aura in Nifskope and look at the various settings (alpha, texture setting and so on). Open your project (for black outline) in Nifskope. Normally in an aura we would make a separate model. Like a bounding box we want something very simple and low poly. But for black outlines, this is how I've seen this done in a few games that came out in the 90's when most games had a cel shaded look (using the same methods right now for my Ninja Turtle project for the Y2k3 ones), you clearly want something form fitting. So in that case you just copy the editable mesh that's already in the nif itself into the same node the original was, repeat this for any pieces. Enlarge by whatever percent appears to look right (1.0X or something). Copy the aforementioned settings from the nif with an aura to the new parts you made to save yourself the trouble. Change the color settings to black (most auras are colored of course). Done.

But again it's excessive and means you our anyone using it is loading twice as many model faces and if you are making a mod it means you will probably be doing it with everything and that is a lot to load. Workable if you are using the low poly game nifs that come with it, not so much when using the custom made ones. This is also the technique used often for controlled shadows, gloss and other effects (refer to Knight Rider 2, another nif based game and the KITT nif which uses this technique for effect). That's why I don't use it myself and am going another route to create a cel shaded look (following the Konami games for my Turtles actually) as well the black and white sketch look. It's a nice look mind you but that's a lot of exhausting work and again I know a few peoples computers won't support it so it's up to you.

[Miraitto]

Thanks for that, Alice. I'll keep it in mind. I'm mostly working with a few high poly models. And the rest are all low poly. To avoid stress on my pc too.

[SickAlice]

I have a fairly new laptop and I still managed to bank out my hard drive about a month ago mostly due to too many 3d models and had to put everything on flash drives. I also am famous for making nifs that are way too high poly for users. I've gotten better at that over the years though and picked up a lot of tricks. Mostly I just think the method here would be very tedious. It's a thing I can imagine myself passing on. Though I'm currently engaged in some other tedious work (I'm almost two weeks straight into making nunchakus right now) so maybe then again it would matter how badly I wanted that finished product or not. Anyways, that's the trick to getting a shaped outline.

[Miraitto]

I guess reshade is the best solution in this scenario. Thanks.