Borderlands

[LOPcagney]

I don't know how I feel about the switch to cell-shadedness.

Here's a slideshow of the new stuff.

Here's the old look.

Any other opinions?

When I first heard about this game I was excited beyond believe. I hope they don't try to brighten it up too much. I actually liked the darkly apocalyptic texture of the early screens.

[Chris]

It's not cel-shaded. But I like the new look. I think it gives it an identity it lacked before. I'm not crazy about the black outlines, but other than that I pretty much like it.

[LOPcagney]

It got the Prince of Persia treatment. Isn't that cel-shading, albeit with high texture resolutions?

[gdf]

Isn't it just one of many techniques that can be used to produce this sort of visual style? I think that's why game designers/artists get touchy when someone calls what they're doing "cel shading".

Borderlands has quietly kept me interested since it was announced, but I'm not sure I like the new visuals, bit turned off by them.

[Chris]

It got the Prince of Persia treatment. Isn't that cel-shading, albeit with high texture resolutions?

No. Prince of Persia isn't cel-shaded either. Cell-shaded is when the shading is basically flat, when there's a really sharp contrast between the lit area and the unlit area. Borderlands uses the same kind of gradual, softer, traditional shading most games do. It just has a colorful high-contrast palette, black outlines, exaggerated character proportions, and so on -- the same stuff POP does, although POP has less exaggerated proportions.

[James]

It's not cel-shaded.

Hahaha, that episode of pod-castage was the first thing I thought of when I saw what was meant by "cel shaded" in this instance.

Borderlands uses the same kind of gradual, softer, traditional shading most games do. It just has a colorful high-contrast palette, black outlines, exaggerated character proportions, and so on -- the same stuff POP does, although POP has less exaggerated proportions.

I'm a complete layman when it comes to this sort of thing, but it looks to me like something slightly unusual is done with the lighting or something, too. At least, there seems to be something beyond mere use of colour that makes things look a little ... I don't know, flatter. Or is that just the outlines messing with my mind? Like I said, I'm a layman; I may also be a cretin.

Anyway, I quite like the new look, and am even OK with the outlines.

A BILLION GUNS

[LOPcagney]

No. Prince of Persia isn't cel-shaded either. Cell-shaded is when the shading is basically flat, when there's a really sharp contrast between the lit area and the unlit area. Borderlands uses the same kind of gradual, softer, traditional shading most games do. It just has a colorful high-contrast palette, black outlines, exaggerated character proportions, and so on -- the same stuff POP does, although POP has less exaggerated proportions.

Yeah. The exaggerated characters is the only thing that really bothers me. It looked like it was shaping up to be such a nice gritty game.

And according to Wikipedia (however reliable a source that is), the black border effect is a form of cell-shading.

[James]

If it doesn't actually affect the shading, wouldn't the term "cel shading" be a bit misleading? I guess "cel outlining" sounds a bit limp.

[Chris]

Yeah. The exaggerated characters is the only thing that really bothers me. It looked like it was shaping up to be such a nice gritty game.

And according to Wikipedia (however reliable a source that is), the black border effect is a form of cell-shading.

It's not a form of cel-shading, it just sometimes accompanies it. Wind Waker is a true cel-shaded game, and there are no black borders at all as far as I recall. The two stylistic choices are totally unrelated. Wind Waker has cel-shading without borders, and Borderlands has borders without cel-shading.

In fact, I'd guess the black border is used more on NON-cel-shaded games, if anything. I don't know why they're so strongly associated in people's minds, because they're both pretty specific visual looks and they're quite different. I think people just lump them all into one big "comic book" category, but they're such incredibly different takes on it that I wish they weren't conflated so often.

(And that said, "cel-shading" doesn't even refer to comic books, it refers to actual cel animation, as seen in 2D Disney films and the like. It's not hard to remember what cel-shading means if you think of it in those terms. That flat-shaded, non-gradient look is necessary in 2D animation for efficiency and consistency reasons.)

[LOPcagney]

The use of cel-shading in video games has somewhat slowed since its inception, even though the technique has been used in recent acclaimed titles. Examples include Dragon Quest VIII, Rogue Galaxy, Killer 7, No More Heroes, Metal Gear Acid 2, Ōkami and Prince of Persia (2008); although, should be noticed, that some of these titles only use the outline effect and do not apply the shading technique that creates the flat look.

On the other hand...

Popularly, this "ink" outline applied to animation and games is what’s called cel-shade, while originally the term refer to the shading technique, indifferent if the outline is being applied or not.

My point is, that's not the point.

I don't dislike cel-shading, nor do I see it as an immature stylistic choice. If you'd like to call this something else, that's fine. Let's go with Prince of Persia's "painterly". Either way, the only thing I'm saying is, it works with Prince, I don't see it working so much here. No judgments, just personal taste.

[spindrift]

There is some shader trickery going on with the lighting, but it's not remotely cel-shading.

I have this argument a lot. People just generally use cel-shaded to mean Not Realistic, and you can spend ages explaining that it's not cel-shading and people will eventually agree, and then turn around and call it cel-shading to everyone except you.

Being stylised and exaggerated isn't mutually exclusive with gritty at all.

I'd have to wait and see it in action, but so far i'd say it works for this game even better than it worked for PoP. I love that instead of going completely cartoony or failing at total realism, devs are starting to experiment with a more stylised realism. I like it

[OssK]

No. Prince of Persia isn't cel-shaded either. Cell-shaded is when the shading is basically flat, when there's a really sharp contrast between the lit area and the unlit area. Borderlands uses the same kind of gradual, softer, traditional shading most games do. It just has a colorful high-contrast palette, black outlines, exaggerated character proportions, and so on -- the same stuff POP does, although POP has less exaggerated proportions.

The Carmack's revenge shit and all that

[Chris]

On the other hand...

My point is, that's not the point.

I don't dislike cel-shading, nor do I see it as an immature stylistic choice. If you'd like to call this something else, that's fine. Let's go with Prince of Persia's "painterly". Either way, the only thing I'm saying is, it works with Prince, I don't see it working so much here. No judgments, just personal taste.

I don't see what point it is to keep citing Wikipedia if Wikipedia is simply wrong on this matter. It's ridiculous and patronizing to say "Well, Wikipedia says this, so it sounds like you're just being pedantic about it, but I'll humor you and you can call it something else if you want." All I'm saying is that it IS something else. I really hope we don't reach such a level of casual reliance on Wikipedia that people can actually change the meaning of words by changing their Wikipedia entries.

Your personal taste is fine. I don't mind if you're making a judgment or declaring personal taste or what, I just take issue with constantly citing Wikipedia as an authority when the whole point of Wikipedia is that it doesn't need to be updated by an authority to be changed. Wikipedia is super useful for a number of reasons and I use it all the time, but unfortunately it's not definitive.

[syntheticgerbil]

Chris is right, Wikipedia is wrong. I've only briefly messed with cel-shading and outlines in 3d a few years ago in both 3DS Max and Maya (mostly because I'm not into the look), but you are doing two separate texture maps to achieve each affect, therefore the outline and the cel look does not go hand and hand.

To achieve the cel look, which is easier to do, you destroy any kind of realistic reflection or bounced light in your texture and turn the specularity up extremely high, killing any major gradients, thus giving you the look.

The outline I kind of sucked at doing just right, but it can be done multiple ways depending on the program, with plugin's, script, or playing with the falloff or outer reflection to emulate hard lines.

Prince of Persia was not cel-shaded, but did have high specularity, so it's sort of similar but not the same. In general, cel-shaded things do not have complicated texture maps like that and is most affective with plain colors.

I'm sure there are many other ways to achieve the same look for both effects that I have no clue about and I'm kind of rusty at 3d lately, but if you asked a texture artist to cel shade an object, you would probably be asked if you wanted an outline as well, but it would never mean an outline only.

[Nachimir]

The outline I kind of sucked at doing just right, but it can be done multiple ways depending on the program, with plugin's, script, or playing with the falloff or outer reflection to emulate hard lines.

The really ugly, expensive way that some mod developers used to hack it into unreal engine 1 was to duplicate character model geometry, scale it up just a little bit, reskin in black, then flip the normals

[syntheticgerbil]

Hahah, I've actually seen someone do that, but I don't remember why they were doing it. That is very messy method indeed.

[Chris]

The really ugly, expensive way that some mod developers used to hack it into unreal engine 1 was to duplicate character model geometry, scale it up just a little bit, reskin in black, then flip the normals

That technique always looks so shitty.

But even in general, the black outlines are rarely done well. When you're dealing with a solid-color element like that, and having it be so relatively thin compared to the geometry it's up against, you're just asking for crappy-looking aliasing and inconsistency.

[LOPcagney]

I can accept that I misused the phrase "cel-shading".

Anyway, if you knew what I was referring to, seeing as I gave screen shots, why bother arguing semantics?

By quoting Wikipedia, I was not only trying to show that there were multiple interpretations of the phrase, but I was trying to legitimize your argument and just get past it; compromise and all that.

I may have been a little too eager to prove that my understanding of cel-shading was correct. Let's just stop all this passive-aggression.

[Nachimir]

the black outlines are rarely done well. When you're dealing with a solid-color element like that, and having it be so relatively thin compared to the geometry it's up against, you're just asking for crappy-looking aliasing and inconsistency.

Yeah, though HD makes it a little easier. I quite liked that they were pretty thin in Crackdown, making them subtle enough that I tended not to notice them and probably didn't notice all kinds of errors around them either.

[MisterNoisy]

I actually really like the direction they've taken visually - it reminds me of Crackdown/Prince of Persia/Champions Online, and helps to differentiate it visually from id's upcoming Rage (which shares a fair number of thematic elements - post apoc wasteland + dune buggies and critters). There seems to be a 'pop' in the color and characters in the new BL screenshots that was wholly absent in the earlier ones, while not going completely Day-Glo.

[Chris]

I can accept that I misused the phrase "cel-shading".

Anyway, if you knew what I was referring to, seeing as I gave screen shots, why bother arguing semantics?

By quoting Wikipedia, I was not only trying to show that there were multiple interpretations of the phrase, but I was trying to legitimize your argument and just get past it; compromise and all that.

I may have been a little too eager to prove that my understanding of cel-shading was correct. Let's just stop all this passive-aggression.

I may be overly specific, but I certainly wasn't passive! I've been pretty direct!

Anyway I just think there's value in using the correct vocabulary for things. I understand the argument of just saying "if the other person understands what I'm getting at, it's fine," I just don't agree.

But of course I also don't hold this kind of shit against anyone personally. It's just the internet!

[SignorSuperdouche]

I'm generally on the "If people understand then that's fine" side of things, I'm not going to complain when someone misuses "begging the question" or says "I could care less", but when it comes to technical terms I think it's important to be technically accurate. Otherwise it will just create more confusion in the long run.

Anyway, whatever it is that this is, it looks pretty nice, but the test for me is whether I'm still consciously aware of the stylisation when I've been playing the game for a bit. If I am then it was a bad choice, if I'm not then it's adding to the overall feel of the game subconsciously and was a good move. It's like how the most effective use of music in a film or whatever is the music I'm totally unaware that I'm listening to (in my opinion).

[James]

A BILLION MOTHERFUCKING GUNS

[Erkki]

A BILLION MOTHERFUCKING GUNS

Each one hand-crafted just for you!

[MonkeyWrench]

All the toe-may-to toe-mar-to talk aside I also agree that the change gives the game much needed identity. I felt it looked far too similar to id's Rage and wouldn't haven't stood a chance against the id hype machine, although their release schedules are probably miles apart. However, I feel Gearbox haven't made a decent game for ages so I'm not holding my breath.