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I remember the first time I saw this effect was on Wacky Races on the Dreamcast. I remember at the time there was a lot of PR around this being the first game

I remember the first time I saw this effect was on Wacky Races on the Dreamcast. I remember at the time there was a lot of PR around this being the first game to introduce that effect and how the developers basically invented it. I can’t comment on whether that was actually true or just PR BS, but it was definitely the first time I experienced it as a gamer.

cubefox 2y ago
Apparently it released simultaneously with the (more famous) Jet Set Radio, also for Dreamcast, which had similar effects. Quite the coincidence.
- evanmoran 2y ago
  Not quite as much of a coincidence as you might think. Many of these algorithms come from graphics researchers presenting at SIGGRAPH (https://www.siggraph.org https://www.siggraph.org, the leading conference). So if so if Jet Set Radio was released June 2000, you can look for related papers a couple years before to see if new techniques were appearing. And, in fact, they were! Disney paper (1998) on texture mapping for cell shading (the color of a cartoon): https://media.disneyanimation.com/uploads/production/publication_asset/45/asset/2DTextureMapping_1998.pdf https://media.disneyanimation.com/uploads/production/publica... NYU paper (1998) applying outlines to 3d objects (the black outline of a cartoon) : https://mrl.cs.nyu.edu/publications/npr-course1999/hertzmann-intro3d.pdf https://mrl.cs.nyu.edu/publications/npr-course1999/hertzmann...
  - cubefox 2y ago
    Interesting. There actually are various recent hobbyists who have achieved these effects even on an N64 due to the quite programmable hardware. But if the basic idea or concrete algorithms were only invented in 1998, it makes sense that contemporary games didn't use it until the Dreamcast was out.
    - hnlmorg 2y ago
      The N64 was also the most powerful console in its generation, so really it’s the next most powerful before the Dreamcast. It only looked like crap in its era because carts were expensive compared to CDs. Which is less of an issue now. Also the hardware antialiasing and overuse of fog didn’t help its case. Thankfully the former can be fixed either via hardware mods or emulation. I’d be still be interested to see if those demos you saw were full games or not. I’ve seen a lot of cool effects in games get abandoned because they didn’t scale well to a fully fleshed out game.
      - cubefox 2y ago
        See here https://youtube.com/watch?v=VqDAxcWnq3g https://youtube.com/watch?v=VqDAxcWnq3g and here https://youtube.com/watch?v=AQphLFA0DZY https://youtube.com/watch?v=AQphLFA0DZY
mewse 2y ago
I suspect a lot of people 'invented' the effect at approximately the same time. Honestly, the Dreamcast was the first piece of hardware really capable of doing the effect to a high level of quality in real-time. I developed the cel shading effect for the Dreamcast game 'Looney Tunes: Space Race' (developed by Infogrames Melbourne House) literally during the first week we had access to a Dreamcast development kit. Infogrames Sheffield (devs of Wacky Racers) were shown an early version of our implementation, and added the similar effect to their game. It looked great, but went into their game pretty late in production, so the game hadn't really been optimised for it the way that ours was. And the folks behind Jet Grind Radio came up with the effect on their own as well, and beat both of us to market. They were using exactly the same algorithm, but were using it in a very different way; they were fully embracing and leaning into the uneven, wide and jagged outlines, where Sheffield and we were fighting against them and trying to match a more uniform and traditional art style. And then only about a year later, somebody seemed to have figured out how to make the edge-detection cel shading approach work in real-time on Xbox, for the game "Dragons Lair 3D". I had done a test implementation of that approach on the Dreamcast, but it wasn't nearly performant enough for us to run it on multiple characters at once while playing a game too! Not sure whether it was due to the Xbox being more powerful or them just having a smarter algorithm than mine, but you can't argue with their results! If you're making a game that you want to look like an actual hand-drawn cartoon, that is still absolutely the best quality way to do it, IMHO. Someday I'll find an excuse to try my hand at implementing one of those again. Performance shouldn't be a problem at all any more, I imagine!
- hnlmorg 2y ago
  Thanks for sharing that. It was a great read.
- Auracle 2y ago
  For a game I haven't thought about in nearly 25 years, I want you to know I instantly remembered how Looney Tunes: Space Race looked.

cubefox 2y ago

Apparently it released simultaneously with the (more famous) Jet Set Radio, also for Dreamcast, which had similar effects. Quite the coincidence.

evanmoran 2y ago
Not quite as much of a coincidence as you might think. Many of these algorithms come from graphics researchers presenting at SIGGRAPH (https://www.siggraph.org https://www.siggraph.org, the leading conference). So if so if Jet Set Radio was released June 2000, you can look for related papers a couple years before to see if new techniques were appearing. And, in fact, they were! Disney paper (1998) on texture mapping for cell shading (the color of a cartoon): https://media.disneyanimation.com/uploads/production/publication_asset/45/asset/2DTextureMapping_1998.pdf https://media.disneyanimation.com/uploads/production/publica... NYU paper (1998) applying outlines to 3d objects (the black outline of a cartoon) : https://mrl.cs.nyu.edu/publications/npr-course1999/hertzmann-intro3d.pdf https://mrl.cs.nyu.edu/publications/npr-course1999/hertzmann...
- cubefox 2y ago
  Interesting. There actually are various recent hobbyists who have achieved these effects even on an N64 due to the quite programmable hardware. But if the basic idea or concrete algorithms were only invented in 1998, it makes sense that contemporary games didn't use it until the Dreamcast was out.
  - hnlmorg 2y ago
    The N64 was also the most powerful console in its generation, so really it’s the next most powerful before the Dreamcast. It only looked like crap in its era because carts were expensive compared to CDs. Which is less of an issue now. Also the hardware antialiasing and overuse of fog didn’t help its case. Thankfully the former can be fixed either via hardware mods or emulation. I’d be still be interested to see if those demos you saw were full games or not. I’ve seen a lot of cool effects in games get abandoned because they didn’t scale well to a fully fleshed out game.
    - cubefox 2y ago
      See here https://youtube.com/watch?v=VqDAxcWnq3g https://youtube.com/watch?v=VqDAxcWnq3g and here https://youtube.com/watch?v=AQphLFA0DZY https://youtube.com/watch?v=AQphLFA0DZY

mewse 2y ago

I suspect a lot of people 'invented' the effect at approximately the same time. Honestly, the Dreamcast was the first piece of hardware really capable of doing the effect to a high level of quality in real-time. I developed the cel shading effect for the Dreamcast game 'Looney Tunes: Space Race' (developed by Infogrames Melbourne House) literally during the first week we had access to a Dreamcast development kit. Infogrames Sheffield (devs of Wacky Racers) were shown an early version of our implementation, and added the similar effect to their game. It looked great, but went into their game pretty late in production, so the game hadn't really been optimised for it the way that ours was. And the folks behind Jet Grind Radio came up with the effect on their own as well, and beat both of us to market. They were using exactly the same algorithm, but were using it in a very different way; they were fully embracing and leaning into the uneven, wide and jagged outlines, where Sheffield and we were fighting against them and trying to match a more uniform and traditional art style. And then only about a year later, somebody seemed to have figured out how to make the edge-detection cel shading approach work in real-time on Xbox, for the game "Dragons Lair 3D". I had done a test implementation of that approach on the Dreamcast, but it wasn't nearly performant enough for us to run it on multiple characters at once while playing a game too! Not sure whether it was due to the Xbox being more powerful or them just having a smarter algorithm than mine, but you can't argue with their results! If you're making a game that you want to look like an actual hand-drawn cartoon, that is still absolutely the best quality way to do it, IMHO. Someday I'll find an excuse to try my hand at implementing one of those again. Performance shouldn't be a problem at all any more, I imagine!

hnlmorg 2y ago
Thanks for sharing that. It was a great read.
Auracle 2y ago
For a game I haven't thought about in nearly 25 years, I want you to know I instantly remembered how Looney Tunes: Space Race looked.