HLSL Image Processing Cartoon Effect

A While ago( Jan 2005 I think =P ) I was playing Naruto on PS2. I found they had something more than just toon shading on their models. I could see slash lines easily on the shadow part of their toon shading; made the models look very similar to the ones in manga. I think the publisher called it "Naruto Shading" lol. And yea, not just Naruto Shading, there was also Dragon Ball Shading and others during that time to emphasis how special their toon shaing were. I thought that was some mysterious effect at the begining, but after some study and research and I realized it was not as hard as it sounded. All those fancy names were all from one effect called "Tone Shading" and its not hard to implement it too. All I had to do was combine the toon shading with a slashing line texture then I could make the slash lines only appear on the shadow part of the toon shading~.

During that time, DirectX9.0 + HLSL were released also, so I used tone shading as a chance to practice how to use HLSL. I used HLSL to write my shader codes and used Image Processing to re-do my cartoon effect. And wow, Image Processing was one very good technique!! With Sobel Silheouette filter, I can find perfect silheouette. Unlike those crappy lines I did before, this Silheouette is smooth and nice. And plus the tone shading, I can make the same effect as that Naruto game lol. Really, Image Processing can really make some nice effect and I think there are more and more games using this technique now like Glow, Blur...etc. I guess Image Processing will become a required technique in the future game industry. ^_^


HLSL Image Processing + Toon + Tone + Silheouette!!XD