I was wondering why you guys (Uber) decided to go with the cel shading art style. Is it to add to the humor, or was it easier on the resources (time, money, ect.)? Don't get me wrong, I love cel shading in games, but I don't know much about how these choices are made and I am curious.
Gearbox would argue otherwise, but the term "cel-shading" has come to mean a lot of things in the gaming community that the gaming industry don't agree with. The term "cel-shading" specifically refers to a shading style where there are little to no smooth transitions in shading, and often include a hard outline around the character. Wikipedia has a decent, though tech heavy write up on cel-shading. I know most people these days use the term to refer to games that aren't realistic looking, or at least cross some threshold in realism. Gears of War is thought of as a "photo-realistic" game, but the characters themselves could not physically exist (how many people do you know with feet bigger than their heads?). Our game is not cel-shaded, however our characters and use of colors are unrealistic in their looks, contrast and proportions. The rendering engine itself is very realistic, we're using the same renderer as Gears of War. We think of it internally similar to action figures or stylized statues that otherwise exist in the real world. The main reason for the style choice comes down to it matching the game we were making. For a long time we didn't know if we were going realistic or stylized, but the type of game we were making lent itself to a less serious visual style, much like some other game that we're often compared to. There's a great write up on that game here.
Thank you for your post Ben! I have been struggling with illumination settings in Blender but this clears up a few things.
