Textured views like that don't work very well with toon shading. The tree in the back at the end of the road, that looks really good just because it's so far away and the textures are already blending. Were you going to use it on a 2d backdrop like that? That's a photo isn't it?

My idea was to use this just for the background, and then a cel shader with sobel filter just for the character. I'm not using photos in the game, this was just to test the shader because I haven't finished modeling yet. The toon shading and sobel filter are finished and very fast. However, this Kuwahara filter is way too slow. I tried a few different algorithms, but they take around 200 texture samples per pixel, which is nuts. I'm only getting 60 fps and I have a top end machine. So I'll have to look into alternatives.

The next thing I have to do, is figure out a layer system. The transparent viewports in Godot 4.0 don't currently work, so that limits the possibilities. I have to look into the source code this week and see if I can fix this. I tried doing the compositing with a full screen shader and a mask. It does work, however, only one viewport can have environment lighting, which makes it look incorrect. And my sobel filter requires the full viewport, which messes up the outline. So even that hack won't work (though I'll have to figure something out, cause I may have a similar problem even if I fix the transparent viewport bug).

I'll give it about a week to try to figure this out. I really wanted an anime look, sort of like a visual novel but fully in 3D. I know it's possible, but I have to get it working fast on old computers and fix the bugs in Godot 4.0. If not, I would have to compromise and maybe use unshaded lighting for the background (which is what a lot of older anime games did) but I think it looks dated and not the style I was going for.

You can see the toon shading and outline are basically final on the character. Ignore the background because it's just placeholder and I have to remodel most of it.

So I got the Kuwahara filter mostly working. This uses a new method that is much faster and actually looks better. Still takes a big portion of the performance, but I think I can live with it and make some compromises elsewhere. Note, the character won't be affected by the filter, she will look like the above image once I get the compositing working.

5 days later

I got the compositing working. It's not perfect, but I think it looks good enough to move onto other things.

13 days later

Did my first animation test. This is not with the original model I bought (I couldn't get that working), but I used VRoid and DEEPMOTION instead. Only spent about 2 hours on it, and it's pretty rough, but I got to see that the tools sort of work. Will need a lot of cleanup on the animation, but at least I made some progress today.

It looks pretty good except for the wobbles. I like blender for animation because you can just paste a reverse pose. If anything it looks too smooth, but for me it's fine because I'm not that fussy.

Yeah, it got the general pose, but it's really jumpy. This was using a video to convert to animation with AI. I mean, it's not horrible, but will need manual clean-up.

a year later

Not sure if the project got removed due to the forum changes, but I'd love to see what this was like. I've spent the last year or so working on Blender BNPR and just switched from Unity to Godot. Being able to achieve similar looks to my Blender work in Godot would be great.

    Shadow64 Not sure if the project got removed due to the forum changes, but I'd love to see what this was like.

    This project will definitely not be developed — the man is no longer working with Godot. And probably removed permanently and irrevocably. Yep, this is directly related to the events on the forum.

    Maybe you will be interested in this:

        Tomcat Oh wow. I had no idea. Thank you for the update. I'll take a look at this!