Tuesday 19 July 2011

Non-photorealistic rendering in Unreal 3

Currently doing some research on Unreal 3/UDK related matters in preparation of something that I will possibly be able to post on soon and I have come across this link here; it is a description of using UDK settings to create a cartoon shader (which works quite well too, as can be seen in the pic below) in the official Unreal Developer Network.

The process uses Sobel edge detection which operates by calculating the gradient of the image intensity at each pixel and then producing a value which correlates to how abruptly the image changes. Very interesting to see this implemented step by step (the instructions in creating the shader are very thorough in the link above) and a very powerful and potent reminder of the real-time visualization potential of NPR styles with modern gaming engines.

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