Postmortem Stylization of Open-Source Games
Michael Lester Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Cary Laxer Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
(a) Screenshot of Stylized Lugaru
(b) Original Shading (c) Stylized Shading (d) Silhouetting
Figure 1: Toon shading highlights the simplied, polygonal form of the rabbit in a pleasing way, while silhouette edge rendering and surface-angle silhouetting adds artistic-looking strokes which accent the edges.
Introduction
Together, these techniques can achieve a compelling new style in an existing system without reducing performance.
Open-source games can benet from stylization of their rendering engine, even after end-of-life. Without professional content artists, it is difcult to achieve the targeted realistic look to which many games aspire. Instead, the result of their attempts is often perceived as unnatural. In other words, if users see complex, realistic textures, they expect detailed geometry. If this is not delivered, the graphics system is blamed. A more consistent effect can be achieved by removing visual clutter, such as high-frequency textures or complex shading, so that only visually relevant information is emphasized. This can often result in a signicant improvement for aging game engines; the simple, low-poly geometry benets from stylized shading that roughly matches its level of abstraction (LOA). This improves both the game itself and its community by providing users a fresh experience and boosting development efforts. We analyze a variety of techniques that can achieve such a style and be easily integrated into an existing system, and present the results of applying these techniques posthumously to the 3D action game Lugaru. Three classes of NPR techniques are discussed: Toon Shading reduces the amount of visual detail on objects in order to emphasize their key features. Basically, the model is shaded in a discrete set of solid tones instead of smooth shading. This simulates the look of the limited color palette used in comic books. Silhouette Edge Rendering emphasize the outlines surrounding objects. Used in conjunction with toon shading, the combination is an effective method of communicating shape. In addition to the aesthetic advantages, increased shape perception can also aid gameplay [Mitchell et al. 2007]. Surface Angle Silhouetting marks surfaces that are nearly edgeon to the viewing angle as silhouette edges and draws them dark. It produces pleasing, artistic-looking strokes for objects of high curvature such as characters, but breaks down for at objects.
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Implementation
These techniques were implemented into the open-source game Lugaru in an effort to reduce LOA gap between its somewhat realistic graphics and extraordinary animation and gameplay style. We show that this integration can be done in such a way as to keep changes to the core game code to a minimum. By integrating a post-processing pipeline stage (postfx), and implementing each technique as a postprocess step, a compelling and distinct style can be achieved easily and with little to no overhead. Furthermore, the system exists in such a way that it is portable to other game engines, requiring only the hooks to supply the postfx stage with the necessary information. Thus a consistent style can be integrated across multiple titles, resulting in the creation of an entire style class of such games.
Future Work
Automatic Content Abstraction would have a profound effect on posthumous stylization. This includes abstraction of complex textures and geometry into simpler forms. Simplied shadows provide an effective style cue that mimics the abstract shadows often found in art [DeCoro et al. 2007]. Gameplay Effects such as jumping silhouettes and object isolation based on gameplay actions.
References
D E C ORO , C., C OLE , F., F INKELSTEIN , A., AND RUSINKIEWICZ , S. 2007. Stylized shadows. In Proceedings of the 5th international symposium on Non-photorealistic animation and rendering, ACM, 7783. M ITCHELL , J., F RANCKE , M., AND E NG , D. 2007. Illustrative rendering in team fortress 2. In NPAR 07, ACM, 7176.
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