FFXIV and Cell Shading

[Nemo5990]

I might be ignorant on the subject, but I didn't think Cell Shading == Back-face Culling.

As far as I know Back-face Culling is only used for edges in Cell-shaded models.

It's what people know it by but it's obvious they materials could be switched from whatever they use to Toon

I am also a 3d modeler, and a professional graphic designer as well.

You cannot slap a canned toon shader effect on a game and expect it to look professional. And SE's flagship franchise has some of the highest graphics expectations in the industry. It would never get past QA - especially after learning their lesson over the fiasco that was the 1.0 release.

In order to do cel/toon shading properly, and up to FF standards, they would have to put in an immense amount of work .

They wouldn't have to do much work a single person with maybe 1hour can do this as an addon option to the graphic tools. The game uses some toon shading already which is used for graphic effect added with contrasted textures.

Edge detection is done through shaders but that doesn't give you a Cell shaded look if you're using photo-realistic textures.

It also doesn't reduce the amount that is drawn, it will have not positive impact on performance at all.

They use their own Graphic Engine shaders aren't a problem and if they are so professional they would have cell shading in their DevKit. FFXIV uses Materials for equipment an very low amount of images for multi-texuring ,They wouldn't have to create any new texture because it would be backward capable now if it were cell shaded texture trying to look photo realistic that would be different but its not.Performance wise it would clearly have a positive impact because the way the Cell Shades will react to reflections and light these models all use SubSurfScattering it would be a smooth look an feel which is why the quality would be to rich.