Toon Scenario without shaders (only lights)

Hello

I'm not trying to discuss here the application of toon shaders but the correct applicability of light and shadow for cartoon-style games.

How do we know there are several games on the market that don't use more elaborate or complex shaders,using the good old diffuse,with lighting factors more well-crafted can reach a result very good without "spend"a lot of machine.

Here 2 good examples that I want:



With a few adjustments made from the Render Settings window, managed to get good results (next to that desire) and with the use of a directional light also managed to generate shadows as desired (again, without using more elaborate shaders).

I'd like to hear opinions about the way used, whether there are better ways, if this is the best (at least that's the most practical) in order to obtain this result.

Here an example of my game after some light adjustments

 

What game is this?

 

The reference is Royal Revolt

 

Your reference images look like it's simply using unlit diffuse textures (with a light map for the environment). The characters have a simple single quad with circular alpha below them for a shadow.

It's all in the textures.

 

Honestly it doesn't make sense,does it really just change the shader?
Or they took other factors to choose the color palette?

 

Well, obviously you need to have nice textures with lighting in them. But yeah, the game you showed pics of is unlit with a light map for the environment, as far as I can tell. Choosing a colour palette is important, too.

It's down to the quality of the mesh and the texture and the consistency of the style.

Your example here has some room for improvement...

Your texture resolution is inconsistent - you've got little tiles and big tiles, all using the same tile texture. They should probably be uniform in size. Same with the windows.

The lighting on the roof tiles is coming from below in your texture. With diffuse-only texturing you do want to paint in lighting to the texture itself, however pick a standard light source for everything in the project (generally you'd imagine a light directly above and a little to the front of the object) and you texture everything as if that's the dominant light source.

The walls have almost no definition or variation of texture, so the very varied tiles look out of place next to them.

 

Yes, you're right about a lot of points in this mesh (it is very old), but I can revisit this texture and do adjustments.
The greate point you tell me, use unlit materials with lot of hard work on hand painted texture.

Thanks