Question Makin it cartoonish.

Greets!

I'd like to give my 3D open world a cartoonish look. There are some online sites offerin possibilities to convert images to comics, but could i apply this with unity and its textures/meshes?

Cheers!

 

You can achieve similar functionality as those sites by creating custom screen space post processing effect
https://www.benmandrew.com/articles/custom-post-processing-effects-in-unity
The effect you need is analog of Posterize filter in Photoshop. I do not understand the exact math behind it, but I think it should go like the following:

Code (CSharp):

1. float PosterizeStep = 0.25//some value in 0 to 1 range. 0.25 will mean 4 levels of posterisation
2. fixed4 col = tex2D(_MainTex, i.uv);//screen rendered to texture
3. col.r = floor(col.r/PosteriseStep) * PosteriseStep//divide each channel value by Step, then round to the lowest integer. Multiply again by Step to keep the result in 0-1 range
4. col.g = floor(col.r/PosteriseStep) * PosteriseStep
5. col.r = floor(col.r/PosteriseStep) * PosteriseStep
6. return col;

A visual representation (Blender shader editor):
https://gyazo.com/8816df083dd653d8daca8975179f4630
Keep in mind that it will be very low quality effect and more complicated in practice (at the very least, you'll need an ability to exclude some scene elements from posterization, like UI). Commercial games usually utilize individual assets with cartoon stylization

 

For individual asset level, there are also toon shaders:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.toonshader@0.6/manual/index.html
They may not work perfectly with all the models as well (extreme lowpoly or realistic faces tend to generate wonky cel shading)

 

Thxs, but that might be all too early for my skill. Don't grasp much of the terms, i should get some experience i guess. And it's not really posterization, more somethin like that: https://www.befunky.com/features/photo-to-cartoon/ or image to painting: https://www.fotor.com/features/goart.html That would be so great.

Btw, the link of your visual representation leads to an empty page, but maybe it's my browser...

 

The link is Ok on my end.
But it was a same code illustrated through nodes (visual programming)
And if you do not plan to code post processing effect yourself, check Asset Store for "cartoon post processing". Though I do not think there are filters based on neural networks, more likely it will also be posterize or gradient mapping. If the services you mention use remote servers, the algorithms might be too slow for use in a real time game

 

Coool, there's one realy promisin, HDRP cartoon post processin. But HDRP, seems to be an improved renderin, right? Bein on linux, could i upgrade to it?

 

I didnt work with HDRP. In theory, the Linux platform shouldnt be an issue, but there may be lot of other pitfalls. Backup your project before switching to HDRP, and additionally ask about consequences on HDRP forum: https://forum.unity.com/forums/high-definition-render-pipeline.386/

 

Goody good. Many thxs for your advices and suggestion!

 

The other way to make your textures cartoonish, is if you have some art skills, put your textures into a software similar to photoshop, and use effects, and filters on each of the image textures, and probably paint over them, using blend effects and transparency. It's actually kind of fun too.

 

Could be tedious as well, with so many textures, though if done at the pace of each textures, why not... Would you think Gimp would enable the same effects?

 

Yes. Painting tools and filters should be similar enough

 

Yep, it might be a bit tedious.
And as stated in DimitriX89 comment, some of the effects should be similar. Last time I used it, gimp had a filter effect, that automatically made pics or textures, look cell shaded and cartoony. It didn't look bad at all, but you might probably want to do some small tests, to get your desired cel shaded look for your textures.

 

Sure, i'll test that. Thxs you all!