#vidyadev

I did some experimenting with the reversed normal method of adding outlines to characters. I’ve used shader methods in the past to do the same thing. While the shaders I tried added almost no time to the workflow they tend to either look good or really bad. Furthermore, this varies widely depending on the model.

If you aren’t familiar with the reversed normal method, it involves duplicating the geometry of the model, flat shading it to your border color, scaling it bigger than the original, and flipping the normals. As a result the bigger model is drawn in a way that is only visible from the opposite direction as the original model. This allows you to have outlines around your models of a similar quality to a shader with some sort of edge detection.

There are downsides. Because it’s more or less double the geometry it can be an expensive method. Concave sections of geometry are frequently glitchy. I need to painstakingly tweak every single border mesh until things look JUUUST right. You can use a simplified mesh for the outline to avoid extra complex geometry. I have learned quite a few tricks to speed things up and cheat to avoid some glitches.

Been working on the battle system for the most part today. Here’s how it looks.