As a game developer myself, none of the things you’re describing are easy to implement. Deferred shading also doesn’t make it easier at all, in fact it would be another extra magnitude of complexity.
@Background Pony #DF5E
Not disagreeing. For example, Poker Night at the Inventory for Tycho Brahe of Penny Arcade was a wonderful, fluid, and overall solid and believable cell-shaded 3D model that could be replicated for the purposes of Pony! :)
@Crazieman
Those games are still use a hybrid style of cell-shading which looks semi-realistic.
It shouldn’t be that hard to make perfect cell-shading for a cartoon like this. Some meshes like the hair and maybe body only have outlines on the outside of the mesh and has a single width. Some lines would have to be added manually like the eyelashes and feather markings (and don’t try to cheat by putting them in the textures). Outline width increases sharply depending on the difference in normals from being not visible at all up to the maximum width. Outline color is manually set for each mesh.
I’d imagine it could be implemented using deferred shading.
@zippysqrl
Cell shaded 3D models have been pulled off fairly well. Look at some of Telltale Game’s titles. Borderlands also did some hybrid cell shading.
@Rubez2525
[redacted] Wait nevermind you meant taking a 3d model and making it look 2d like this, not the other way around.
There’s probably a few cases where that wouldn’t quite work and custom shapes would have to be implemented, but for the most part it’d probably work fine.