Cel-shaded: Do you know what it really is?

Wind Waker's Cel-Shading, one of the most noticeable parts of the game. But do you know what cel-shading actually is? I didn't until recently.

No, it's not cartoony.

No it's not primary coloured.

Yes, it does have something to do with big black lines being drawn around all objects.

It's to do with normals.
I'll make as simple an example as I can.

All 3D models can only be seen from one side. This makes it twice as fast. You never need to position the camera inside Link's head, so why bother letting it be seen from the inside? So every face on a model can be seen from one side. Got that? Good.

What if the faces were to be drawn the other way round though?
Here's what it'll look like:


Before. You can see the two front faces, nothing else.


After. You can now see all faces BUT the two front ones. See?

I hope that explained that.

Now, back to cel-shading.

To cel shade, you first create another cube, but slightly bigger and put it on top of the first cube. It should completely hide the first one. Make it black.
You then flip the faces of this cube, like in the picture above. Voila!


You see the black lines? Those are the edges of the reversed cube, because the shape is reversed, you can see them!

Because you have to draw everything twice in cel-shading (once normally, next bigger, reversed and black) means it is twice as slow! Another ineteresting fact.

Cool way of explaining it, i actually never before knew how they did it, or why it was called Cell shaded. I mean i had a small idea. . .

I hate it when people say its crap, i reckon its heaps good because it makes the game run so much smoother, thx for lettin me know the details

Originally Posted by x link x

Cool way of explaining it, i actually never before knew how they did it, or why it was called Cell shaded. I mean i had a small idea. . .

I hate it when people say its crap, i reckon its heaps good because it makes the game run so much smoother, thx for lettin me know the details

Wow! Thought I'd never get a reply.

More stuff I found was, there are 2 techniques for celshading, the one above and vertex shaders, which allows you to exaggerate lighting and stuff. I'll show you it when I find it more.

Plus, Wind Waker, in fact uses vertex shaders and NOT the outlines on the first post. Viewtiful Joe and Ultimate Spiderman, however, use both.

Thanks for explaining, that was quite interesting. I never knew how Cel Shading was done.

Cel Shading is fantastic, even if it looks cartoony, that's what it's SUPPOSED to look like. And nevertheless, it's great. WW has just as good a feel as OoT, because even though it was cartoony so to speak, the movements were still realistic.

Thanks again

By the way, everything before this is 100% fact

Cell shading isn't necessarily cartoony. I believe that in the E3 2005 videos for TP they say how it is cell-shaded using the same engine as wind waker.

Originally Posted by Zelda_Stuff_Guy

Cell shading isn't necessarily cartoony. I believe that in the E3 2005 videos for TP they say how it is cell-shaded using the same engine as wind waker.

No, that was the game engine actually. Quite a few people mis-understood.

An engine is what runs a certain aspect of a game. WW and PH use the same graphics engines, but WW and TP use the same gameplay engines. TP and WW play the same.

Yeah, that does confuse things.


OK, I've discovered the other thing that makes cel-shading. You know how a sphere with a light on the right in a normal game would be white on one side, slowly becoming black on the other? This isn't so with cel shading. In cel-shading, the sphere would be white on one side and black on the other. The contrast is higher, so there are less shades. This gives it a hand-drawn shading feel.

Though I know what cell shading has been for a while (I'm an animation major after all) I very much appreciate you clafifying this subject for many of ZU's hmm.. "primitives" so to speak

Ocarina of Time in celshaded graphics is awesome, yall who like cel shading should go check that out. PM me if you wanna know more

I never thought celshading made Wind Waker look childish or cartoony, it just added an interesting new perspective to the scenery and environment.

You know why everyone calls it cell shading? because some guy called it cell shading and then someone else thought it was so he posted it and it spread around so now a lot of people think that TWW was kiddylike because it was cell shaded so now cellshaded has a double meaning.So now when talking about cell shading in the WW it has a double meaning.

Originally Posted by Goron Man

You know why everyone calls it cell shading? because some guy called it cell shading and then someone else thought it was so he posted it and it spread around so now a lot of people think that TWW was kiddylike because it was cell shaded so now cellshaded has a double meaning.So now when talking about cell shading in the WW it has a double meaning.

Cellshading is...well, it's sort of like two or three hues of color, all placed at one side of the light source. Say the light source is to the right, then the darker hue would be to the left, and so on. Basically, there isn't much realistic color, so it would look more cartoony and hard than realistic and soft.

At least, that's sort of what it is in drawing and such.

Well, I was a bit disappointed that only Link, other characters and a few other things had this style. Everything else just had simplified non-realistic textures to give it a cartoony look. It would've been cool if houses and more objects were cel-shaded.

Originally Posted by Pattering_Rain

Cellshading is...well, it's sort of like two or three hues of color, all placed at one side of the light source. Say the light source is to the right, then the darker hue would be to the left, and so on. Basically, there isn't much realistic color, so it would look more cartoony and hard than realistic and soft.

At least, that's sort of what it is in drawing and such.

That's what I was trying to say earlier, I just couldn't find the right words. So you either have a black outline or only two or three different hues of colours in lighting, or both to make something cel-shaded.

Originally Posted by Senap

Well, I was a bit disappointed that only Link, other characters and a few other things had this style. Everything else just had simplified non-realistic textures to give it a cartoony look. It would've been cool if houses and more objects were cel-shaded.

Didn't the houses only have 2 or 3 different "brightnesses" too? I'm going to have a look.

I've just checked, you're right. Although, places like Forsaken Fortress and dungeons did use the effect, the overworld isn't obviously affected by lighting at all!