Tips on how to get good results in cartoon style

I am developing a game that will have its atmosphere focused on cartoon graphics, my best reference in this sense and made in Unity is the game Super Lucy Tale, however I know "where" I want to get but I do not know exactly "how".

I've seen several assets of shaders cartoons, many with very good results, but nothing that really resembles the outcome of the game used as a reference. I also know that lighting is responsible for a good part of the good result, but it's no use if I do not have the starting point, a good shader and a good understanding of how to use it.

I would like to hear opinions on how I should focus on the creation process considering that I believe I am not a standard Unity 5 shader that was used in this game but rather a specific selection of shaders.

Links or article references are welcome as study material.

 

Hi,

Shaders will only get you so far. Most of the cartoon look comes from the original assets - models and especially textures. I'm sure the artists on this forum will be able to provide better details, but I just wanted to get it out there that there is no magic shader that will make a non-cartoon style asset automatically look like a cartoon.

 

Thanks for your reply, I'm working in textures following this kind of style, flat but satured colors, and baking occlusion maps for improve the visual style. The final result I guess is a mix of good light work , shaders and some post processing scripts.

 

The character from Lucky Tale has full colors , there seem to be no hand painted gradients, it's uniform delimited colors. This could be made sculpting a high res model with separate parts , each part with its own material, and retopo the model and bake your model flat colors.

All details are 3D, there is no painting to bring details, upper hears or end tails are 3D details and separate colors. The cartoon shader will achieve the smooth lighting, however it looks like they just use a standard directionnal light , nothing special.

For the level it's hand painted colors with small variations color for details painting.
There is no real secrets lol

It's the same as this sculpt and using simple color materials , and baking it.
(Do a google search, there is tons of cartoon tutorial)

 

I feel like I'm so close and so far at the same time, for example I did from the mesh base a detailed version, however when I col on Unity and adjust the normal map unfortunately the result has nothing cartoon, it's more for a realistic FPS of what I expect;

I'm using Shader Standard to try to improve the result, but here comes the change of shader I believe, because lighting will not make a difference.

Can someone help me please ?

 

For level moutain model, your dark color with specular looks like some monster not some terrain moutain, try using brighter colors , some light gradient color variation should work.
With some AO baking or painting it should look good.
I made a quick paint over, just to give you the overall idea.



You can also make it stylized when sculpting making hard edges to make it looks more like rocks. With flatten, polish and cutsom brushes it should be easy.




For characters the pig needs polygons to delimit different colors areas instead of painted texture, and some polygons bevel by color or some bump map would help to get better colors separation.