I'm the anon that was answering questions in the old ArcSys thread before jannies shit the bed. I thought it might be worthwhile opening up a general and posting resources I've gathered for those that want to get better at the look.

Resources:

Strive In-Depth Texture/Vertex Paint Function Breakdown: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ejZ9TrIFNwiawLcFj-XRtaO3Vg9TxD04sR8HKOaRkGI/edit
ArcSys Xrd GDC Talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhGjCzxJV3E&t=0s
ArcSys Xrd 4Gamer Article:
https://www.4gamer.net/games/216/G021678/20140703095/
Xrd Design Docs (Modelling, Rigging, Materials):
https://archive.org/details/GGXrd-design-docs/4Gamer%20-%20The%20Secrets%20of%20GGXrd%27s%20Graphics/
Blender Shader: https://github.com/Aerthas/BLENDER-Arc-System-Works-Shader

Making square UVs. This is how you get sharp inner lines. You can go further if you study recent CC2, ArcSys and Hi-Fi Rush models. They have a duplicated transparent character mesh mapped to a decal map that allows them to get certain comic-y strokes on their characters. You don't necessarily need to duplicate your characters, just handle the decals in your UV2 and merge them in the material.

>>993799
The result of this:

Box modelling characters. This is from Junya Motomura, Lead Technical Artist and Character Modeller @ ArcSys, the director of Dragon Ball FighterZ and the guy in the GDC talk above.

>>993799
Just an addendum to this, it's quicker if you use the UV Squares addon so you don't have to bother with constantly straightening an island and using Follow Active Quads for the rest.
https://github.com/Radivarig/UvSquares

>>993801

>>993801
>>993802

Git gud at using Vertex Colors. It's a core part of the style as they can hold a bunch of extra data that will make your models pop.

Make sure you're on blender version 3.6 or earlier and download Vertex Color Master (VCM).

https://github.com/andyp123/blender_vertex_color_master

You can use it to create shadows, determine outline thickness, customize outline depth for cool hair tricks and a whole host of other shit. Just make sure to follow the Strive texture breakdown in the OP.

Here with A.B.A, you can see that the red vertex channel is used to determine areas in shadow. Practically any model using this technique has shadows in the red vertex channel. The different intensities determine if the area is always in shadow (0.5 intensity) or always in shadow AND darker (0 intensity).

>>993805
Vertex Colors example:

We were talking about SDF maps in the old thread. It's essentially the de facto way of handling custom normals for the face nowadays. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, when Arc System Works or CyberConnect2 or whoever make their models, they make certain cuts in the face geometry that allows them to control the shading on a vertex level. This is why their faces look super clean and might 'snap' when the light source is rotated. Problem with this method is that this custom shading breaks the moment you deform it. There's plenty of 'fixes' for this like having a proxy mesh to data transfer normals from in blender or fixing this on a per-frame basis like ArcSys/CC2. The SDF approach bypasses all of that by handling the shading of the face entirely through textures so you can deform and distort the face however you want and it'll still maintain the shading you want. miHoYo games have been doing this ever since Genshin Impact. It's a relatively new technique but it's increasingly looking like the go-to because of how much easier and faster it is compared to custom vertex normals.

>>993808
I would highly recommend checking out the recent Hi-Fi RUSH GDC talk about this.
https://gdcvault.com/play/1034251/3D-Toon-Rendering-in-Hi

>>993808
>>993809
An example of a good face threshold map in action:

>>993811
You know we can do this in real softwares, that won't get outdated or broken.

>>993805
Are the green and blue channels never used?

>>993799
Beautiful. I needed to see that.

>>993808
These so called "SDF" maps, are essentially what I've been trying to figure out for a while. But my approach was more procedural. Rather than layer multiple textures over each other to create a map, I wanted to layer floating points on top of each other, and have the mesh grab the radial angles of the points in real time. I never quite figured out how to make the mesh sample more than the nearest point though. It should be possible to sample multiple points and combine them. But it's beyond my ability right now. Drawing the map out of multiple textures looks to be the simplest method. But I really want to get my floating point method working.

>>993817
Blue is for outline depth. Red and green affect shading alongside the ILM map. Green specifically adds extra shadows based on how dark it is. Green vertex channel isn't used in FighterZ IIRC.

>>993824
It’s also not used in normal situations in 3D, what you’ve done is exclusively only for Blender and the output of rendering engines being incorrectly executed. This should not be the answer to your problem in blender.

>>993834
Are you stupid? This is for the ASW UE4 shader or the various recreations that have been made for Blender, Unity etc. Get the fuck out of my thread.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ejZ9TrIFNwiawLcFj-XRtaO3Vg9TxD04sR8HKOaRkGI/edit
https://gamebanana.com/tools/7226

>>993811
Any tutorial of how to do this?

I download a nami model from one piece world seeker, it has these weird purple images in it, what are they? they don't look like a normal map or sss, roughness maybe? what could it be?

>>993848
combined maps, a grayscale map packed into each of the RGB channels

>>993845
>>993847
>>993850
Again very specific use for Blender, this doesn’t work in real game or animation. It just looks like original because it was built to be like the original during stationary. The comments from 3 years ago also line up with what I’m saying. Your statement about UE working is false and current version doesn’t apply to older material methods.

This is how everyone currently does things and it works: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/ue5-anime-toon-cel-shading-model-works-with-launcher-engine-versions/544226

>>993850
>a grayscale map packed into each of the RGB channels
It's exactly that, thanks.

>>993851
>a grayscale map packed into each of the RGB channels
>this doesn’t work in real game or animation
Nigga, as a code-monkey you have no idea the unholy amount of aberrant data I cram into every channels, and not only the RGB ones - nor only one type of data packed into a single channel.
A shader that extract 3 unrelated grayscale maps from a single texture is just a regular Monday for any gamedev.

>>993854
No gamedev does your nonsense and it’s not something you see in professional 3D software. What you’re doing here is nothing. You are spreading misinformation because you see one method used specifically in blender that doesn’t apply to technical applications and others. It just doesn’t work.

>>993815
omg do I choose blender or maya as a beginner? so hard to determine what I should spend my time in

>>993798 (OP)
idk why do you think this needs its own thread
>B-but it is about NPR
it is about anime shit and you already have a general and couple of threads more about that, you are flooding like Cris.

>>993860
NPR is a more complex topic than you think

>>993834
>>993851
>>993855

I'm the one who asked about green and blue channels and I think you're missing the entire point. >>993845 is right, you need to have a way to put in data somewhere in the model or textures to output the data. I'm still new to doing shaders so I like to prototype them in Blender and you could easily recreate them in shader code. If you do any kind of coding and do custom shaders, you'd know this. This board is already shit and your retardation is the least that this board needs.

>Green vertex channel isn't used in FighterZ IIRC.
I've been experimenting on doing some kind of masking because I have characters that can wear armor etc. I paint them similar to a gradient so that I can mask them according to a threshold.

>Blue is for outline depth
Doesn't Arcsys use mesh for outlines? I guess they set the depth through shaders. IIRC they use mesh outlines so that they have some kind of control on certain scenes but I don't know if its by shader or blend shapes.

Speaking of outlines, any good resources on
implementing proper shader based outlines? I always end up finding shitty ones that cuts off from sharp edges

>>993862
Oh fuck off with your “custom code” that you don’t want to share and made this guy >>993856 assumed it’s something UE can do. You don’t know a single thing about materials and only copied from sources that aren’t reliable, such as Blender.

>>993863
>assumed it’s something UE can do
Kek. Just kek. Not only are you a Blender hating faggot because you got filltered, you literally don't know how anything works. Entertaining you with replies is a fucking waste of time.

>>993847
Here you go anon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-K6bCAl6Qs

>>993855
>No gamedev does your nonsense and it’s not something you see in professional 3D software
disingenuous filtered faggot. cry harder.

>>993862
>Doesn't Arcsys use mesh for outlines? I guess they set the depth through shaders. IIRC they use mesh outlines so that they have some kind of control on certain scenes but I don't know if its by shader or blend shapes.
It's exactly that. Vertex alpha controls the size of the outline, blue vertex channel controls the depth. Refer to pic related.
>Speaking of outlines, any good resources on
implementing proper shader based outlines? I always end up finding shitty ones that cuts off from sharp edges
Is this for blender? Unreal? Unity? The Aerthas blender and Unity shaders already come with outline solutions built-in (geo nodes in the case of the blender shader, which is great).

>>993865
You literally said you never tested this method, you don’t show it being animated and Blender’s own document says it’s not built for such things: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/freestyle/introduction.html

No one can understand your methods when you refuse to share the code you made. This is why we can’t create a Disney clone movie, we don’t have their code, do you expect we can steal better than Disney with your code or what?

>>993811
I wonder how hard it would be to translate this kind of shader into a realtime game engine like Godot or Unreal?

>>993880
It's not that hard if you know the basics. I haven't tried the SDF map method yet but I tried doing Arcsys shader in Godot and got most of the basics right. You have way more control on how lights interact with the anime/toon shader which is the main thing I'm tring to figure out.

>>993867
Thanks anon!

>>993880
There's already resources out for this. Here's a dedicated shader for Unity that you can check out:
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/anime-shading-plus-281737

Unreal:
https://nagakagachi.hatenablog.com/entry/2024/03/02/140704
https://unrealengine.hatenablog.com/entry/2024/02/28/222220
https://github.com/nagakagachi/NagaSdfTextureToolForUE

Games like Hi-Fi RUSH, Blue Protocol etc are Unreal games using this tech. Look into them.

>>993884

>>993855
>No gamedev does your nonsense
How disconnected from reality are you?
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.high-definition@12.0/manual/Mask-Map-and-Detail-Map.html#MaskMap
Even Unity's default HDRP Lit shader use this kind of technique. Hard to make more "yes, the industry casually does it" than that.

>>993880
99% sure Genshin already does this.

>>993808
This method isn't affected by lamps or light sources, though, right?

>>993798 (OP)
in 2xKO, a cel-shaded fighting game by Riot, the characters have 2 head models, layered upon each other. Why would they do that?
Pic related, the left mesh is the upper layer, the right one with sharp edge is the hidden mesh beneath.

>>993902
I'm only guessing, but I think that's related to the threshold maps like in >>993811 . The left face is the actual displayed face, and the one on the right is the one that the cel shadows are calculated on; that way they some out simplified.

>>993902
check face orientation, sometimes the hull for outline is simplified

>>993912
>>993914
here is the model, come and take a look if you will
https://www.mediafire.com/file/blfw3anzmqxgjeb/Ahribase.7z/file

>>993886
Oh that thing that’s exclusively to Photoshop and Gimp is legally not allowed to copy because of Adobe’s greed. Ya sure anon anyone can do alpha channels in any photo editing platform. Gee that explains why none of these things you posted in the beginning work.

>>993919
>Gimp is legally not allowed to copy
this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOZv-A_6iFk

>>993919
Look, you dense triple nigger: I don't give a shit about *your* software.
I'm just a lurking codefag who saw someone say something very retarded about what is or isn't common place in gamedev.
You can be ass-blasted about it as much as you want, it won't change reality.
Whether software on the artfags' side can or can't do it is completely irrelevant to game engines being able to do it.
Putting shit in channels not intend for it to reduce the amount of transfer between CPU & GPU and/or to allow shaders access data that aren't part of the expected package has been part of gamedev since the early 3D era. iirc Spyro skyboxes stored their color vertex data in the UV channels to save on size, for an old-timey example.

>>993914
oddly enough the outer layer is RED while the inner layer is BLUE. Why? Shouldnt the outer RED?

>>993920
>YT comments: doesn’t work
Ya good one, you sure showed me. Gimp is the blender of the photography. Yes it works under certain circumstances and rules. The alpha channel in this case is the lost of data which is very important for game engines. Something that isn’t useful anymore because Unity and Unreal Engine alternatives offer better results.

>>993922
And you call yourself a gamedev, more like a slopdev if you just want a mess. Players complaining about the game graphics. The lag you brought upon yourself and other things. There’s a reason why art development exists, we artists know why certain things work in games and other styles like your nonsense doesn’t.

>>993928
>Spyro1 is slopdev

The retard is only posting here because there was a blender screenshot in the OP.
Everyone knows vertex color is a Vec3 in the vertex struct. Its proper use is arbitrary by virtue of it being software.
If you recursively filter words like "maya", "professional", "software", "cris", all of his posts disappear and /3/ becomes 100x better. All the retarded bullshit posted on this board is from just this one user.

>>993936
Pretty much, this board is already slow as fuck and all it takes is one schizo that has too much time in their hands to keep spamming absolute nonsense.

>>993925
the outer layer is red, did you mess up the import?

>>993943
I used a tool called umodel to extract the model and then imported it to blender. The import option looks likes pic related. I dont think there were anything wrong with it.
here is the model, if you want to check it out
https://www.mediafire.com/file/blfw3anzmqxgjeb/Ahribase.7z/file

>>993944
weird, try again, are you on blender 4.2?

>>993945
Iam on 4.0. Well I guess I will just flip it.

>>993945
so, whats the point of that pointy ayylmao head? face threshold something something?

>>993943
>>993944
>>993945
>>993946
Guys... The outer layer being red is correct. That's the outline mesh being inverted (hence the normals being flipped) so you can see the outline. It's not supposed to be blue. Look up the 'inverse hull' method which is the main way to get outlines on characters in games going all the way back to the PS1.

>>993956
if the outer layer being red then how can they display the character's textures on it?

>>993957
The normals on the outline mesh are being flipped, meaning any other underlying mesh like the base is what will be seen instead. The outline mesh is then expanded a little and given a black unlit material to give it that outline effect.

Watch this video if you want a better understanding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-urA3hqzF30

>>993959
very good. Nice understanding. Upvoted +1

>>993956
>reading comprehension

>>993931
>>993936
Nothing in 3D should be exclusive, this guy methods only work in Blender and only in that software. Not in Unreal, not in Unity and definitely not in Maya. Your opinion on how wrong you are was just insults on me because you don’t understand what I just said. A blender user like you is always oblivious to actual facts. The answers you give are from other sources not yours and such sources also claim limitations of their source.

I know how to deal with your lies, I know for a fact this method you used can’t work under animation. You never showed them, no source does. Your nonsense has lead you to this point and your lies back to the wall.

Upload a animation gif in 4chan let us see if your method is real or fake.

>>993969
>not in Unreal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=m5bP-xc6Sgs
>not in Unity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE9lPns7x4E
You also got linked the corresponding article in Unity's official documentation, just in case you think it's a conspiracy run by jewtube
>not in Maya
I don't give much fuck about Maya, since the discussion was about what's possible in game engines. Unless Maya tried to become one? I vaguely remember Blender attempting that at some point.

I genuinely don't understand what you are trying to achieve. This is a basic practice. It's common. It's pretty much on the same level than trying to argue that game engine can't have real-time lighting or something.
Please open a game engine once in your life, make some cris-tier slop, and see by yourself that not only it's possible, it's also easy and useful.

>>993936
It's actually impressive. I only lurk here once every century but damn, I pity your board if that's true.

>>993971
>Entirely on unity
>claims nonsense
No it’s not “This is a basic practice. It's common”, you falsely believe it. The fact that you don’t want to animate or put it on the game engine proves that your dumb methods for Blender is exclusively for blender. Any movement you try will result in problems.

>>993902
maybe something about the way theyre making the game doesn´t allow them to do it all at once. ZZZ for example has mesh duplicates of the hair and parts of the body mesh that have accesories drawn in them, each mesh holds a different material, which could just be done wth masks in blender

>>993976
Wow, the other Anon wasn't exaggerating.
Anyway, yeah you are right. A technique that has tutorials for it in every major game engine is actually impossible. That was the logical conclusion and you saw right through the conspiracy. Good job champion.

>>993971
>It's actually impressive. I only lurk here once every century but damn, I pity your board if that's true.
the curse of a slow board, it only takes one autist who never got attention from his parents to ruin it

>>993977
No it’s not, this is the MMD model. The head base is morph to allow the animation team to move the face. You can morph the face and put it on MMD if you actually try faker.

>>993978
>>993979
Look you can’t claim he created something that is only in blender and never tried to do anything else with it. Unity and UE are using different techniques that do not apply in Blender. In other words he is making shit up.

Can I have some help with the mouth and the fans?
I'm running into two problems right now.
>Problem 1
I can't seem to get the arcsys mouth shape right. I found a tutorial video that helped me figure out how to make a mouth in the style at least, but it was too small and me trying to make a big enough mouth led to pic related
>Problem 2
As you can see, the fans around the mouth are shitty. I have like five different guides right now. (cont)

>>993990
(cont)And the triangles look completely different. Some of them have like 3 or 4 fans from the mouth connected to one vertex to the face