Moebius-style 3D Rendering | Useless Game Dev

It’s shading time. Watch me try to make a shader that renders real-time 3D in the hand drawn style of Moebius. There be crosshatch, outlines, sobel filters, we’re in for a bumpy ride.

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It’s moebin time.

More reading/watching on this subject:
- The book the character reads in the intro is by @danielilett , check out their channel!

Music:
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0

Moebius drawings are from the following books:
- 40 Days dans le Désert “B” (Moebius Production)
- The Art of Edena (Dark Horse Books)
- L’Homme du Ciguri (Les Humanoïdes Associés)

And as always, have a good one!

#devlog #moebius #shaders #unity #gamedev #indiedev

[uselessgamedev]

REGARDING SABLE:
Many comments mentionning Sable and suggesting that I check it out. I have tried to answer some of them but I'll consolidate everything here.
I have played Sable before. I did intend to talk about it in the video, maybe do some sort of comparative analysis. In the end this project took a long time to make and I was getting tired of it, so I just finished and published the video, sans Sable.

Art-wise, Sable looks great, definitely has a nice Moebius/Nausicaa feel to it, despite some compromises they probably had to make for it to work as full scale open world game, such as the treatment of lines, or addition of fog. They did a great job at making their style performant enough to render an actual game, which my prototype could not do (granted they probably had more time to spend on developing it than I did)

Gameplay-wise, I was really excited to play Sable from the first day it was announced, and I think I even bought it on launch day. Ended up being a bit disappointed. Despite a few bugs and camera issues, the game feels a bit empty and it seems like eveyr time an NPC gives you a quest, you have to go on the other side of the world to find the one cave/tower/whatever where the McGuffin is, and then bring it back again. I'm not saying they're doing that to inflate the completion time, it's just a bit boring to me.
I did not finish Sable, despite being a Sable preacher for litteral years before its release. Regardless, if you enjoyed playing it, good on you! I can totally understand that some people have different tastes than mine.

Overall I'm really happy this game exists, it's always good to see some studios inovating in the rendering side (instead of chasing "more realistic" graphics)

[highvelocitytictac]

I've always wondered how most filters that can completely change a scene work and this has certainly enlightened me

[liambenson]

Dude, if you aren’t going to make a full scale game with this texture, you should release it to the unity asset store.
Also, your videos are great!

[KevinTan]

High Quality dev vids like this deserves hundreds of thousands of subs.

[supermuffinbros]

Learning what Moebius's style looks like makes me appreciate how well the game Sable replicated it. I was almost fooled into thinking it was a Sable screenshot on the first drawing with his signature style. This video is really enjoyable and well-made so far!

[skyefreeman]

I've solved the wrapping problem if you're interested. 1: you can triplanar project the textures and make their tiling frequency equal to a number such as 200, divided by the z distance to camera (you'll have to play with values). This makes the texture appear to be the same size from all viewing distances. You can also multiply by the focal length so that if you zoom your lines won't get too big. I've done this in arnold for Maya, but I'm sure it's possible in realtime. 2. You can use camera projection but add/subtract the root of the z distance to the U or V coordinate. (you'll need multiple texture sets for your positive and negative X and Y normals... Also I get good results using motion vectors to switch on per frame jittered UV offsets in the texture placement. Things that don't move will hold their hatching, moving objects will appear as though drawn anew each frame. Also if you have motion activated deformers to jiggle anything moving relative to camera you get the hand drawn innacuracy (also a little post process distortion can't hurt). With those modifications it'll be perfect. I generally use procedurally generated stretched noises to create the lines that have a lot of information so that I can blend them smoothly from 0-1 in luminosity, before choking them to black and white pixels.... Hope that all made sense

[coyotefetido]

As a french guy who grew up with metal hurlant (or the us version Heavy Metal) I’m just so pleased to see so many dedication to fit Giraud’s style! THANKS!

[TheDimsml]

Have you seen a game called Sable? The art style was definitely influenced by Moebius. The Sokpop Collective games also have that hand-drawn feel, but it is more cartoonish, I guess.

[hashbrown]

the reflections at 7:55 look sick, I think if you were to make a nighttime city track where you whizz past street lamps it'd look absolutely stellar

[sylvanbrander]

This is not only a wonderful video on texture, color and 3d model processing, but an impromptu history lesson on an art style that I absolutely love and had no idea where it came from! Thank you!

[magutanko]

As a massive Moebius fan and newly 3D sculptor.. I find this absolutely amazing. A lot if it went over my head, but I hope to come back when I've gained more experience.

This is crazy.

[deadalus]

It looks so good, i really like the lined shadows!
Every frame looks drawn!

[clownhunter]

Such a great video! Very informative and entertaining. I loved how you animated adjusting the properties (like the outline getting wobblier or the cross-hatching moving up the sphere).

[ninetofive]

Seeing this video when the channel has just over 19k subs just means that I am very early with discovering a youtube channel that is going to grow atleast to the hundreds of thousands of subscribers. The knowledge, the way everything was explained and the editing show potential only a few people have. Sebastian Lague is the person I instantly tought of when watching this video and I hope your channel will grow just as much!

[valterlqsantos]

I work with 3D architetural rendering for almost 15years and on my off time always wanted to achieve this kind of looks to my renders ( since I lack the handrawing skills).
your approach to shadows was exaclty what I always wanted.
now all I have to do is to somehow embed this in 3dmax+corona.
great work! maybe one day I'll make it to my future creature batlle game too.

[NotMassLucks]

useless game dev??? I have a strange feeling, that this is going to be a revolutionary video inspiring others to try out these drawing-like renderers for games or even movies. Really great job.

[bloxxybaddie]

i love how artsy it makes everything look! it's super unique and it feels like you're in a comic book. Even just the crosshatching would be pretty cool as a unity asset ❤

[naimea]

This is so cool! As an animation student I'd love to see a movie in this style

[safetinspector]

Fascinating! I love the color addition and removal as you go through the hoops. It’s so clear when you miss, compared to other games where this is indicated with audio cues or hud alerts. Beautiful

[Vafan]

I have no idea how I found this. But I needed this. This is awesome and you have a great way of explaining and keeping it fun and interesting at the same time. Well done, sir!