Illustrative Rendering in Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 | Illustrative Rendering in Team Fortress 2
Video Info
Released:	August 13, 2007
Run time:	3:34

"Artstyle" redirects here. You may have been looking for guidelines on TF2's visual style.

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In Team Fortress 2, we chose to employ an art style inspired by the early to mid 20th century commercial illustrators J. C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell and Norman Rockwell. These artists were known for illustrating characters using strong, distinctive silhouettes with emphasis on clothing folds and they tended to use shading techniques which accentuated the internal shape of objects and characters with patterns of value while emphasizing silhouettes with rim highlights rather than dark outlines. — Illustrative Rendering Abstract introduction

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"Illustrative Rendering in Team Fortress 2" is a developer video showing off the creation, mechanics and usage of "illustrative rendering" as it pertains to processing the artstyle of Team Fortress 2. It was originally shown at the 2007 International Symposium on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering.

Trivia

• The color palette in the video would return on the contribute page in order to guide users on how to color certain weapons and hats.
• The Pyro, Spy, Soldier, Heavy, and Engineer were showing a different type of Phong shading, while in-game they use basic "$phongexponent"s instead of their own "$phongexponenttexture"s.
• In 0:55, some classes are different in the video. One consistent difference between all classes is that they used their beta heads, found in their gibs.
  • Scout appears to wield the Nailgun which it didn't make it to the final game. His belt buckle is also darker.
  • Soldier's RPG is from Trailers 1 and 2.
  • Pyro has a hose connecting their Flamethrower and gas canister. They also have completely solid emblems (instead of the slightly opaque ones on their final playermodel), and a black gas canister, with a smaller grey one accompanying it.
  • In 0:01, Demoman's class emblem is a stick of dynamite, as in release TF2. In 0:55, Demoman's class emblem is completely blank, like in Meet the Demoman.
  • Heavy's class emblem uses the prerelease skull and crossbones emblem, seen in Meet the Heavy.
  • At 0:28, Spy is seen with lighting and flex errors, giving him a ghoulish appearance. At 0:55, he has an appearance which can be seen in his locker and Ubercharge textures. His Revolver had a wooden grip instead of ivory, giving it a similar appearance to the Festive Revolver.
  • Medic uses his gib head model (with the texture used present on his body texture) & he also holds a black Syringe Gun.
  • At 0:01, Soldier uses a model for his head different to Trailer 1 and Trailer 2. But at 0:55, his head uses its Trailer appearance.

Resources

• Accompanying paper
• Movie's original file
• Accompanying slideshow
• Archive link for YouTube movie (Low quality)