Cell Shading in Unreal

So I was messing around with creating art styles for my next game and ended up getting caught up in making a cell shader :stuck_out_tongue:

Once its done I plan on releasing the files along with a tutorial but first, I want to get a better idea of what people want from cell shading. Any comments would be appreciated

So far I have;
Textures supported

  • Diffuse
  • Normal
  • Spec Colour
  • Spec Strength
  • Spec transparency
  • Lighting Banding

Other

  • One Directional light or point light
  • Skylight/ambient light control
  • Post process to control shadows
  • Sobel Edge (courtesy of Allar’s awesome little freebie.)

Recreated the windwaker style

This is amazing, I’d love it if you shared the files or released a tutorial for this.

This is looking great friend. I was wondering if you got any solution to have sharper solutions? Look at below the left eye of the lil guy, the shadow is not sharp. There are a few non-sharp places at other parts of the mesh but its pretty visible there. What do you think the cause of it, or can it be fixable?

Thanks!

Very awesome shader, how do translucent objects behave?

I was also trying to learn how to create a cell shading material. Did you manage to make it works with shadow casting?

I think its due to the models low poly count, If it had more geometry it would be smoother. I will experiment and get back to you :slight_smile:

Haven’t tested yet, will add it to the list of things to test.

Cheers comrade. :slight_smile:

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Left is low poly, right is high poly.

Thank you for the clarification AzzaMat, well done!

Neat! Did you do this with materials or did you modify the shader code in the source?

I have done two so far. One is a post process, the other is a material and a bit of BP.

this is awesome

First version is up! Looking for some feedback :slight_smile: This is Post Process only. The material only version will be coming soon.

http://www.strangelynamed.com/tutorials/2016/5/23/cel-shading-in-ue4-material

Very cool and simple, however it feels a bit finnicky with the banding texture. I tried splitting half and half into black shadows and white hightlights and depending on the distance from the object some artifcats show up like this: https://i1.someimage.com/mM51rMg.png

would love to see how you solved it in materials tho. We use a toon shader on our characters in our game, currently the build for 4.10 made by another member of this forum (I forget his name atm!)

Nice! Looking forward materials-only tutorial since I think it would be more suitable for mobile platforms.

Thank you so much! It’ll definitely come in handy

Hey ZeoZen, there are a few ways to solve that, first make sure your colour band texture has clamped UVs instead of tile. If that doesn’t fix it, make sure you are locking the autoexposure in the post process.

Followed your tutorial last night and got some really nice results! Looking forward to seeing how it works through a Material :slight_smile: