By Jennifer Lynn Hachigian (Celshader) (24.43.84.119) on Saturday, January 04, 2003 - 04:30 am:

I'm cross-posting this to CGTalk.com; I figured folks on both forums will dig these animations.

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Someone emailed me recently with links to information about this game. As a collector of all things celshaded, I'm tempted to buy a copy of Toon for its celshaded animations alone. Only the character animation and occasional loss of ink lines through geometry intersection give away the 3D nature of these character models.

On the other hand, I'm not the target audience for this adult dating sim game. Still, the sample animations posted on the web look darned pretty. Here's two links with descriptions.

Warning: this page has slightly steamy images towards the bottom. Click on the top two images to download self-extracting WinRAR files containing G-Rated MPEG-1 animations:
http://teatime.ne.jp/infor/toon/toon_sys.html

Download the self-extracting "toon_op.exe" from this page to see the beautiful opening animation. The animation shows slightly steamy images at the end, but nothing R-rated:
http://teatime.ne.jp/infor/toon/toon_mov.html

To extract an MPEG-1 video from one of these self-extracting files, double-click on the file and left-click on the leftmost button in the window that pops up. Enjoy!



Jen Hachigian
Celshader.com

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You can build her, too.
Character Modeling and the Super Cel Shader

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By Tom Winnicki (Tom_Winnicki) (65.93.66.62) on Saturday, January 04, 2003 - 10:03 am:

Holy crap! What the hell are they using?! The 3D cel-shader that is.

By Jennifer Lynn Hachigian (Celshader) (24.43.84.119) on Saturday, January 04, 2003 - 10:37 am:

I'm hoping someone here might know what software got used. It reminds me of the D-Creation unReal celshader for LightWave, but the artists could have used anything. They sure as heck know what a drawing looks like, though.

I can take a stab at some of the techniques. Some of the backgrounds and desks lack a shift in perspective, so I'm guessing the artists pre-rendered some of the backgrounds/desks, tweaked the images to taste and either mapped these images onto polygons or used them as layers in AfterFX.

They also could have used color texture maps for the irises and specular highlights for each character's eyes. Note that the eye highlights move with the irises, instead of across the irises.

The artists may also have went with color texture maps for the eyebrows of each character.

Looking at the shadows of the hair, the artists may have taken the extra step of painting shadows directly onto the hair. The hair casts shadows onto the characters' faces, but the hair's self-shadowing looks "fixed."

I'll admit, I'm getting ideas just from scrubbing through these beautiful videos.

Jen Hachigian
Celshader.com

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You can build her, too.
Character Modeling and the Super Cel Shader

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By Beam Tracer (Beamtracer) (203.109.241.109) on Saturday, January 04, 2003 - 04:39 pm:

The Japanese are fantastic! Masters of animation.

By jin choung (Jin) (63.28.231.97) on Saturday, January 04, 2003 - 08:32 pm:

yikes....

nevermind the steaminess... it's the objects of the steaminess that jumped out at me.

kiddie porn anyone?

jin

By Chris Burkert (Cb_3d) (212.113.164.97) on Saturday, January 04, 2003 - 09:05 pm:

Looks amazing.

By Lernie D Ang (Faulknermano) (210.14.22.14) on Sunday, January 05, 2003 - 07:55 am:

i've been trying out unReal this past few weeks. awesome plugin. it really love its ink line renders, which i've been more concentrated on. i've yet to delve into the celshading bit.

By Tom Winnicki (Tom_Winnicki) (65.93.71.173) on Sunday, January 05, 2003 - 11:44 am:

Tell me more about this unReal, like where to get it.

By Burton R. Ogden (Burton) (172.147.67.205) on Sunday, January 05, 2003 - 02:56 pm:

Tom,

You can get unReal at this link:

http://webclub.kcom.ne.jp/mb/dhm/

The problem is that the program and the documentation are in Japanese, so instructions on how to use it are a bit hard to come buy. One helpful source of information is this message thread, which contains a tutorial and some translations:

http://www.lwg3d.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8984

The "machine" translations of the Japanese language are crude at best and in many cases completely unhelpful. I wish some translator who truly understands the nuances of the Japanese language and cel-shading software would do a good book on the subject of Anime and Cel-Shading and provide a lot of detail on how to use unReal and other cel shaders. And an English language version of the unReal software would be helpful.

By Lernie D Ang (Faulknermano) (202.57.91.88) on Sunday, January 05, 2003 - 08:29 pm:

"And an English language version of the unReal software would be helpful. "

i'm not sure if i understand what you are saying: but just to be sure: there is an english version of unreal (i'm using) it. the unreal plug comes in _j (japanese) and _e (english) variants. the fellow from LWG (i forgot his name, pardon me) who made a translation and put it in a jpeg file which i've created an html version from it. it's still rough though (in the works), but if you want clearer text it might do good for you. i've also corrected some grammatical errors. i hope i was on target - i dont know japanese.

By Tom Winnicki (Tom_Winnicki) (65.93.64.170) on Sunday, January 05, 2003 - 09:09 pm:

Please give.

By Lernie D Ang (Faulknermano) (202.57.91.88) on Sunday, January 05, 2003 - 09:16 pm:

unrealhtmldocs unreal_docs.zip (62 k)

By Lernie D Ang (Faulknermano) (202.57.91.88) on Sunday, January 05, 2003 - 09:19 pm:

sorry tom... i thought i had typed in to email me.. but since i cant access yahoo mail right now, here you go.