Skip to content
HHackerTube.videoSurprise me

GuiltyGearXrd's Art Style : The X Factor Between 2D and 3D

GuiltyGearXrd's Art Style : The X Factor Between 2D and 3D on HackerTube: recommended by 2 Hacker News commenters across 2 separate months, 2019–2025.

GDC Festival of Gaming

talk · intermediate · evergreen

Open on YouTube

A GDC 2015 talk by Arc System Works technical artist Junya Motomura on how Guilty Gear Xrd rebuilt a classic 2D fighter in full 3D while keeping a hand-drawn look. It covers the art and programming R&D and the stylistic decisions behind it.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN points to it as the definitive example of making 3D rendering look like 2D animation through cel shading, outlines, and framerate tricks.

people recommended it
2
separate months
2
strong recommendations
0
discussed on HN
2019–2025
“showing the lengths they went to achieve a high-res hand-drawn look while developing Guilty Gear Xrd.”
— flobosg, Dec 2020, in “Designing 2D graphics in the Japanese industry”

What HN commenters said

4 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.

nathan_comptonAug 2025Recommends

This is an artistic choice with a variety of film precedents. Its not exactly the same thing, but if you watch this GDC talk about the way that Arc System Works uses 3d to simulate 2d animation, it gets some of the ideas across: ▶ this video Artists might want to produce a lower framerate just to make something look filmic (eg, 25 frames per second) or hand animated, but it can also be a deliberate stylistic choice for other reasons. Eg, the recentish Mad Max films used subtle undercranking to make action scenes feel more intense, and part of that effect is a more noticeable frames and I think there is a bit of that in the Spiderverse films too.

in “Will Smith's concert crowds are real, but AI is blurring the lines” · View on HN

flobosgDec 2020Recommends

Nice resource. While not strictly 2D, it brings to mind this GDC talk [1,2] from Arc System Works showing the lengths they went to achieve a high-res hand-drawn look while developing Guilty Gear Xrd. [1]: ▶ this video [2]: [link]

in “Designing 2D graphics in the Japanese industry” · View on HN

grumbelNov 2022Cites it

Only if you keep it really low resolution and low framerate. If you want something higher resolution, multiple camera angles or fluidly animated doing it in 2D quickly becomes impractical. Guilty Gears for example started out with 2D sprites and then went 3D with Guilty Gears Xrd[1][2], but with a lot of trickery to keep it looking 2D'ish, though that always was more anime-style than pixel art. [1] [link] [2] ▶ this video

in “AI and the Future of Pixel Art” · View on HN

corysamaMay 2019Cites it

A very simple implementation of cell shading is to run the result of traditional lighting through a lookup table in the form of a 1D texture. Having runs and steps of solid color posterizes the smooth lighting input so that it resembles painted cell artwork. A very simple implementation of outlining is to draw the object a second time solid black, with the vertex positions extruded out in the direction of the vertex normals, and with backface culling flipped so that you see only internal faces. Those black, internal faces peeking out around the edge of the regular mesh form the outlines. That's a good starting point. Many iterations and improvements from there gets you to this: ▶ this video

in “3D Game Shaders for Beginners” · View on HN

Topics & tags

Computer graphics & renderingGame programming & enginesguilty gear xrdcel shadinggdc2d look in 3dtechnical art