Posts Tagged ‘raytracing’

Fake Toon Outlines

Wednesday, May 7th, 2008

Here’s a fun one! Ever wanted to re-create the look of heavy “toon” outlines, but didn’t have a shader for it? Believe it or not, there’s an easy way to fake it using fixed-function only.

Here’s how to do it:

  • Make sure all your surface normals are unified (facing outwards) and your polygons are set to 1-sided
  • Make a copy of your object and resize it so it is ever-so-slightly larger than the original
  • On the copy, set the surface material to black
  • Invert the surface normals

That’s it! Nifty, eh? The method’s not perfect–for best results, stick to convex objects–but it’s great for quick renders and on limited hardware platforms where shaders aren’t an option.