How to make BORDERLANDS style CHARACTERS : a texture creation tutorial! 

that is exactly what I'm going for, glad to hear I hit the mark!

ezzedine cimper thanks! :)

Chief Archon thanks, glad to hear it.:)

+Karst96 it is an old school trick, glad it helped!

One thing that held me up when I did this with my rendering was under Attribute Editor > Render Stats, Double Sided needs to be disabled on the border/reversed normals polygons. I got really blotchy spots until I did that. Again, thank you for the guide.

Crow Is that different than the toon renderer? I didn't use the toon renderer because I wanted it in viewport.

It has two methods, both display in the viewport. There is a PaintEffects mode where it draws around the object's silhouette and a "Offset Mesh" method which is identical to your process. RenderingTab>Toon>Assign Outline It has a lot of control and requires less manual steps.

Crow That's what I get for ignoring paint fx for so long! :) This is good info, thanks for sharing.

Gearbox doesn't use toon shaders in Borderlands. They use a thing called a sobel algorithm to put the outlines in and of course they use realtime rendering since, obviously it's a game engine. Toon shaders reduce or eliminate surface detail and soft color transitions. If you look close at Siren or whatever (and why wouldn't you) she's not toon shaded and has a ton of surface detail. Her outlnes get added in the post processing. And what's more she's got outlines of her normals within the model. Also her outlines remain distinct even when she's sitting in a chair with its own outlines. Spiderverse gets its lines in a totally different way and does use cell shading. But I know nothing about that since I just saw a 'making of' video that didn't really get too specific. Evidently there's an A.I. involved though.

chame17 thanks!

Aaron Grylls take heart, I'm not that fast, the video was sped up quite a bit!

You replied! :o you're such an inspiration seriously, going to University in September and I'm hoping I can one day be as good as you :)

Aaron Grylls I'm flattered, thanks! Start practicing now, it will help later on.

Yeah I practice whenever I can! Usually when I'm bored and have nothing to do I'll either watch Maya/UE4 videos or try create a 3D asset for learning purposes and maybe use them later down the line :) I've done about 30+ assets so far, not a lot but it's all been practice for me! Would love to hear some personal tips from you and improvements/suggestions, would make my day!

Aaron Grylls sounds like you are already on the right track... hmm, my biggest tip for young artists is to do more traditional art training - take anatomy, color theory, composition, and lighting/photography classes. Most artists assume that if they know the software well, that will be enough- but the hard part is actually being a good artist, not using the tools!

My version works in a game engine. Of course there are toon shaders in game engines that can be used, you have to compare both techniques for performance.

My next character series will have stylized textures, so stay tuned!

try different lighting set ups. If all else fails, turn up the Ambient Color on your texture's material, that will make the material basically glow in the dark.

+Jesus Castro thanks! just a Lambert for this one.

+James Taylor Thanks!!

El Maje Gamer - Me Entendes thanks, glad you liked it! To export your textures from mudbox, right click on the name of the texture layer, there will be a few options like 'export selected' or 'export channel to PSD'. You can import textures the same way.

Thanks so much i appreciate your answer :D

Irfan Khan for the diffuse, I used this specific smudging brush in photoshop that I can't remember the name of right now. :/ and the strands were done with paintfx in maya, I then converted them to textures with alpha and assigned them to poly planes arranged around the head.

Marquis Miller yeah, the technique I used for the outlines probably won't work real well in mental ray. Try going to the outer shell object's attributes, and find 'double sided' or whatever it is and turn that off. I would also turn off 'casts shadows' and 'receive shadows'. Right now MR is rendering it two sided and lighting it appropriately, so it is casting a shadow, which is why everything looks black.

James Taylor Hey man that method worked for mental ray. Thanks a bunch. Now to outline EVERYTHING!!!

Yo Zimbogamer ha ha ha glad to hear it, have fun!

liam mckeown There is a setting somewhere in both the object's attributes, and the render settings window, something like 'force 2 sided faces' I think, that will over-ride the other settings you mention.

Hey James. Thanks for the info. It's helped solve the issue =) Cheers

+Ansity the style isnt copyrighted. as long as you arent making borderlands fan games for money you're safe. Gearbox doesn't own this style, they werent the first to do it.

Pandan oh okay, cheers :)

I appreciate the semantics on this one, especially because it just makes sense 👍

joejection thank you!

It definitely does mean the polycount was doubled. For a low-poly mesh like this one, that's pretty irrelevant. For higher-poly meshes, you would want to come up with a screen effect or a shader that handles the outline for you. Gearbox has its own custom shader dedicated to creating outlines in game.

Ah OK, thanks!

Oh, actually I guess lining up clothes with uv sets in photoshop could work the same

Yes, it is called projection painting, lots of other programs can do it - the two you named do it, I think

James Taylor thank you!!!!

BL2, you could get away without normal maps. For borderlands 3 I think normal maps are the default now.

thanks! yes, I'm a professional artist in the industry

TheItalian Animators thank you!

+Manan Bachkaniwala turn off two-sided rendering on the attributes of the outline mesh

Dan Thiry Mental Ray defaults to rendering everything 2 sided, you have to disable that feature everywhere you can find it - render settings window & object attributes

Dude, thank you for responding. I really appreciate it. Sweet! Thanks.

Thegoldenteddy bear thanks, but Gearbox beat me to it! ;)

Well I think you should also make one ;)

Thegoldenteddy bear ha, thank you! :)

Your welcome :)

For this tutorial that's all I did, because it is about diffuse textures. I did sculpt the character and extract a normal map, as well, but no specular / metalness was used.

Thanks! do you have any video how to bake diffuse map like you did now?

+Xtwist3dg0dX depends. You could start with the Mudbox base mesh and sculpt it to look like what you want, and then texture. Or you could model in Maya first and then do the textures.

Ohhhh okay cooool, thank you. Pretty much just figuring out how to model n all, i mainly animate in maya so trying to get more in depth with modeling and texturing, sooo thanks for the video.

Daniel Norton I will have to check it out, I crossed paths with Monty a few times when we worked at Midway.

IGarrettI yes, the real issue is draw calls and transparency, though. True, there are twice as many polys, but polygon limitations aren't as big a deal for games any more. What is a big deal are draw calls - the number of times the renderer has to draw a specific pixel. Things like materials, and especially transparency, add up here. So depending on how the engine handles the backfaces here, it could be a problem; or it could be the quickest solution.

James Taylor If the engine has issues, what are the other ways to go about doing the outlines?

IGarrettI that would be a question for your graphics programmer. Shaders or post process effects are both options.

IGarrettI Some engines (for example unity3d) can generate these kind of outlines. called cellshading. U just need to apply it to ur raw textured model ;)

SacrethHD didnt know unity can do that ,but it was kind of obvious; Unity is cool and quite powerful! However I find it hard to create a good looking overall lighting

+Sally Mae yes, I don't see why not

+Deadpool Wade Wilson make sure the outer shell is set to be one sided

Will try that! thanx!

+James Taylor Hey I've been having the same problems too. But what do you mean by setting it to be one sided? Thanks!

Adam Danial Adam. stop pretending we arn't working on the same thing.

+ Deadpool Wade Wilson Shutup Wade.

Ketchup Beard zbrush does have poly paint or something like that... but for painting, Mudbox is much easier and faster to use than zbrush.

Thanks James, your vids have been amazing for my uni work. I just wish I had found you sooner so that I could do more to my work before the deadline.

Ketchup Beard my pleasure!

Oscar Rode thanks Oscar. :)

You'll have to be more specific, which emoji was I?

The highest of compliments! Thank you 😃

@@MethodJTV yw. Have a great day.

+Jack Donovan thanks Jack!