Cheers, thanks for the opinion
It's a custom unlit shader, and yeah we're trying to strike a balance between regular PBR shading, and a more stylized stroke shading, all the while making sure that all the details of the ships read
It's great! I love that hatched shading style. It works especially well with angular objects, which you've got.
How far away will things be on average? Space as a setting can result in things being real far away and it'd mute the effect of this style a bit if most cel-shaded objects are like a half inch across.
Not really a ding against the style! Cel-shading is a nice way of making foreground objects pop, even at small sizes. I'd just miss that hatching.
That's a very good point, this type of shading only works at a certain size, before it just starts becoming visual noise
Thankfully we can control the distance of ships from the camera, since there's only ever two ships on screen and the viewport is split , each half focusing on one ship. You can see what i mean [here](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d63c7f_5acfc80543304c758db154c06ad3e4f5~mv2.png)
You will be able to freely rotate around the ships, zoon in and out to a certain degree, but you'll never see a ship as a 60x60 pixel speck
Thanks, glad there's one other person that thinks making pretty 3D space ships for a "card game" is not a complete waste of time XD
Truth be told it always bothered me that in most space shooters if you get close enough to inspect an enemy ship, you're pretty much dead, so best kill them while they are a blip on your screen
Made a gif for you, it actually looks decent in motion. Hopefully the compression won't murder the effect.[https://drive.google.com/file/d/15MWlmD2FL5KZnoaIUmIQrYigLw0g0\_iU/view?usp=sharing](https://drive.google.com/file/d/15MWlmD2FL5KZnoaIUmIQrYigLw0g0_iU/view?usp=sharing)
The gif is about 18mb, for those on low bandwidth
edit: there's some weird white flashes for a couple of frames, beware photosensitive people!
Wow, thanks! It looks surprisingly good in motion. When it's moving, it adds a vibrant "electronic buzz" texture to the whole model that I've never seen before. It's unique and I like it!
The overall aesthetic is pleasant to look at and delivers on a sci-fi feel perfectly. I like the colours, the contours, and the overall utilitarian, tech-y, modular design of the vehicle.
Thanks again for showing off a moving version!
I think it looks great! I love the effect on the shadows with the lines, however I think some bits of it look a bit too blurry? Like the arm on the front, something about it looks less crisp than everything else. Dunno if there's anything you could do about that, but I think it would definitely be an improvement if you could add a little crispness to it!
Fantastic work though :)
Cheers!
This hatching style kind of breaks down on long thin objects, which is why it might read as blurry. The solution could be to create a separate mask texture to avoid hatching those kinds of objects
I personally think that the fact that it's not as clear could be a very good thing. It could draw your attention to the focus of the piece, but that's if you want the body of the ship to be the focus (but I would, so..)
True, that's one way to look at it, wish we could have such fine controls over the shader to actually make that possible , but there's only so much you can do with a parametric approach (so while this arm looks blurry now, when you change the angle you view the ship from, the effect might go away)
Okay, so I've seen it in motion and adore it! The Shafer has got a very unique look and is satisfying to look at. This is definitely the start to a game with some unique and quality character, keep it up!
Very nice! Is it all diffuse/emissive or is there metallic/roughness info in there as well? Love the little details, and they read quite well with the shading.
We are also using an AO map to control where the hatched shading goes, and a metalness map to control the strength and size of the specular reflection (we had those maps already from our old PBR shader, so we tried them out and it worked out pretty well, especially the AO)
Cheers.
We started out with a more "traditional" look, but just another generic scifi is pretty difficult to market ( not that i think our ships are generic , we put a lot of thought into them, but there's only so much you can do with ship design if you want to keep it plausible).
So we want to come up with our own visual identity to help us stand out (it's also fun to try out new things , venture off the beaten path).
We are limited in terms of manpower, so we can't just redesign our assets to make them more stylized, thus the second best (and easy) option is to keep our existing ships, but play with lighting and shaders to get something interesting.
I totally know what you mean, it's really difficult to get a cartoon shader to look good, especially on characters and complex meshes. Only a few games pull it off really well (the Guilty Gear series being my favorite, and they go to a lot of extremes to make it behave consistently)
Getting a toon shader to behave consistently can be really tough and usually involves a lot of "cheating", like having a separate lighting rig for each character, custom vertex normals for each animation, and so on.
So far this shader seems to be really stable, a lot more than expected, i think the fact that the hatching is more subtle helps a lot.
This is the third time we redid the shader to get it to behave robustly on more complex meshes
[https://hidden-fields.itch.io/the-colony](https://hidden-fields.itch.io/the-colony) This game has a really neat look to it. It's sci fi as well, but has halftone patterns and a sketched art style.
Wow it is pretty cool. I definitely like this more than a full realistic shading. I see one of the picture you passed with two ships, that one also looks amazing! Do you have official Instagram or other SN to follow it closely?
[Our Twitter](https://twitter.com/WarlikeCCG)
[Our itch.io game demo page](https://warlike.itch.io/warlike)
[Our Discord](https://discord.gg/aKYh8SZhsR)
[Our Website](https://www.projectwarlike.com/)
We generally post images and updates on Twitter and hold most discussions on Discord, and we have a by-weekly devlog on our website. We don't use Instagram and Tiktok , who has the time to get into those as well? XD
Yeah, we're currently concepting out the characters - crewmembers, enemies, civilians, etc
We'll post an update on our devlog [here](https://www.projectwarlike.com/) this weekend
Looks like something of the cover of a old school sci-fi novel. Nice.
[удалено]
Cheers, thanks for the opinion It's a custom unlit shader, and yeah we're trying to strike a balance between regular PBR shading, and a more stylized stroke shading, all the while making sure that all the details of the ships read
It's great! I love that hatched shading style. It works especially well with angular objects, which you've got. How far away will things be on average? Space as a setting can result in things being real far away and it'd mute the effect of this style a bit if most cel-shaded objects are like a half inch across. Not really a ding against the style! Cel-shading is a nice way of making foreground objects pop, even at small sizes. I'd just miss that hatching.
That's a very good point, this type of shading only works at a certain size, before it just starts becoming visual noise Thankfully we can control the distance of ships from the camera, since there's only ever two ships on screen and the viewport is split , each half focusing on one ship. You can see what i mean [here](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d63c7f_5acfc80543304c758db154c06ad3e4f5~mv2.png) You will be able to freely rotate around the ships, zoon in and out to a certain degree, but you'll never see a ship as a 60x60 pixel speck
Beaut! It's nice to see a game that's all zoomed in on pretty spaceships.
Thanks, glad there's one other person that thinks making pretty 3D space ships for a "card game" is not a complete waste of time XD Truth be told it always bothered me that in most space shooters if you get close enough to inspect an enemy ship, you're pretty much dead, so best kill them while they are a blip on your screen
Add another to the list of thinking it's not a bad idea. Looks great!
It's a cool look, but I'd need to see it in motion. I find that many cartoon-style shaders look good when still, but look strange when animated.
Made a gif for you, it actually looks decent in motion. Hopefully the compression won't murder the effect.[https://drive.google.com/file/d/15MWlmD2FL5KZnoaIUmIQrYigLw0g0\_iU/view?usp=sharing](https://drive.google.com/file/d/15MWlmD2FL5KZnoaIUmIQrYigLw0g0_iU/view?usp=sharing) The gif is about 18mb, for those on low bandwidth edit: there's some weird white flashes for a couple of frames, beware photosensitive people!
Wow, thanks! It looks surprisingly good in motion. When it's moving, it adds a vibrant "electronic buzz" texture to the whole model that I've never seen before. It's unique and I like it! The overall aesthetic is pleasant to look at and delivers on a sci-fi feel perfectly. I like the colours, the contours, and the overall utilitarian, tech-y, modular design of the vehicle. Thanks again for showing off a moving version!
Risk of rain 2 vibes
Looks good ! A bit too dark but color choice is perfect
I think it looks great! I love the effect on the shadows with the lines, however I think some bits of it look a bit too blurry? Like the arm on the front, something about it looks less crisp than everything else. Dunno if there's anything you could do about that, but I think it would definitely be an improvement if you could add a little crispness to it! Fantastic work though :)
Cheers! This hatching style kind of breaks down on long thin objects, which is why it might read as blurry. The solution could be to create a separate mask texture to avoid hatching those kinds of objects
I personally think that the fact that it's not as clear could be a very good thing. It could draw your attention to the focus of the piece, but that's if you want the body of the ship to be the focus (but I would, so..)
True, that's one way to look at it, wish we could have such fine controls over the shader to actually make that possible , but there's only so much you can do with a parametric approach (so while this arm looks blurry now, when you change the angle you view the ship from, the effect might go away)
Okay, so I've seen it in motion and adore it! The Shafer has got a very unique look and is satisfying to look at. This is definitely the start to a game with some unique and quality character, keep it up!
Nice, thanks for the encouragement!
gives off no mans sky vibes. I like it
Very nice! Is it all diffuse/emissive or is there metallic/roughness info in there as well? Love the little details, and they read quite well with the shading.
We are also using an AO map to control where the hatched shading goes, and a metalness map to control the strength and size of the specular reflection (we had those maps already from our old PBR shader, so we tried them out and it worked out pretty well, especially the AO)
Love it. Has a very scifi comic book look.
All the stuff you have posted in this thread is really nice,
Thank you!
Yes. That is all.
I love scifi, traditional too. That being said the look is amazing!
Cheers. We started out with a more "traditional" look, but just another generic scifi is pretty difficult to market ( not that i think our ships are generic , we put a lot of thought into them, but there's only so much you can do with ship design if you want to keep it plausible). So we want to come up with our own visual identity to help us stand out (it's also fun to try out new things , venture off the beaten path). We are limited in terms of manpower, so we can't just redesign our assets to make them more stylized, thus the second best (and easy) option is to keep our existing ships, but play with lighting and shaders to get something interesting.
I like
Im generally not a fan of cartoon-esc shading but this is really nice!
I totally know what you mean, it's really difficult to get a cartoon shader to look good, especially on characters and complex meshes. Only a few games pull it off really well (the Guilty Gear series being my favorite, and they go to a lot of extremes to make it behave consistently)
This is amazing
Cool!
Reminds me a bit of The Outer Worlds style, really good look!
I like it.
I love it.
I love it! So long as the shader behaves properly. Can't stand when they are real flickery and inconsistent.
Getting a toon shader to behave consistently can be really tough and usually involves a lot of "cheating", like having a separate lighting rig for each character, custom vertex normals for each animation, and so on. So far this shader seems to be really stable, a lot more than expected, i think the fact that the hatching is more subtle helps a lot. This is the third time we redid the shader to get it to behave robustly on more complex meshes
Keep up the good work. I can only imagine how frustrating bending it to your will must be.
If you add some wear into it, like asteroid impacts it’ll be a nice next level
Reminds me stylistically of Risk of Rain 2 but more geometrically complex. I like it!
Likey
That’s just beautiful
[https://hidden-fields.itch.io/the-colony](https://hidden-fields.itch.io/the-colony) This game has a really neat look to it. It's sci fi as well, but has halftone patterns and a sketched art style.
Will check it out, thanks!
Is this a handwritten shader, or is it a shadergraph shader?
It's made with amplify shader, we're still on the legacy render pipeline
Very attractive. It's changing my mind. I'm starting to think that this style would be better suited for my game.
Nice! happy to be an inspiration, we've leeched enough inspiration on our own from others :D
Looks awesome!!!
Wow it is pretty cool. I definitely like this more than a full realistic shading. I see one of the picture you passed with two ships, that one also looks amazing! Do you have official Instagram or other SN to follow it closely?
[Our Twitter](https://twitter.com/WarlikeCCG) [Our itch.io game demo page](https://warlike.itch.io/warlike) [Our Discord](https://discord.gg/aKYh8SZhsR) [Our Website](https://www.projectwarlike.com/) We generally post images and updates on Twitter and hold most discussions on Discord, and we have a by-weekly devlog on our website. We don't use Instagram and Tiktok , who has the time to get into those as well? XD
Hahaha yeah you're right haha. Twitter and itch.io will do a lot better to follow you hahaj
Love it!
This is sweet, could be anime with characters looking dif.
Yeah, we're currently concepting out the characters - crewmembers, enemies, civilians, etc We'll post an update on our devlog [here](https://www.projectwarlike.com/) this weekend
I frankly want expecting this positive of a response, thanks everyone!