A different kind of cel shader

you are just amazing, i am currently still building my models, i would love to use your shader. how do you think it will look in a space scene?

It’ll look great! The sky is excluded from shading so your stars will look nice.

Try to get lots of subtle detail in your textures so it generates those soft lines everywhere - space things tend to have lots of mechanical, geometric edges and you want to pick those up. Try loading in your in-progress models and see how it looks, post some screenshots!

A few new things, like a 3d targeting reticle and some decent aimoffset blends.

Hi Antidamage, you make a very good work with this effect :slight_smile:
I’ve tried but I found an error, when I change resolution or I enlarge window jumps out something.

This is the normal version without error:
http://imgur.com/q5dCUGJ,sXzqJTK#0

Here instead is the error:
http://imgur.com/q5dCUGJ,sXzqJTK#1

What could cause this?

Thx.

That’s the print dot part of the shader - it shades dark areas with a screen-space texture. You can adjust it and turn it off here:

Drop the opacity to 0 to disable it, or adjust the darkness threshold of the area shaded by editing the density value. In this case your scene looks quite dark so I’d try lightening it a bit perhaps, or it won’t find anything to shade.

Nothing to do, while changing those options the problem remains:

http://i.imgur.com/M1yp8NX.jpg

The weird thing that if I do not change the resolution or I enlarge the viewport, is perfect without any kind of error. Maybe it’s a problem of my monitor, my maximum resolution is 1600x900.

I see you’re running a vignette as well - I haven’t tried many other post-processing effects in combination with the shader - could that be causing it?

I’m quite curious to get to the bottom of it so I’ll make a new level and try to recreate your scene and get back to you. Thanks for the feedback!

Thank you so much, however do not lose too much time, from what I understand it is just a matter of resolution. I did some other tests and decreasing the resolution change, the effect increases http://i.imgur.com/GvnJxC5.jpg
The strangest thing is that it looks like a “virus” to make it go away I’m forced to close the editor.
Today I try a little bit on the forum if I find some similar error.

P.S. I tried to disable the other effects one by one, but the problem remains, of course if I disable the PostProcess the error disappears.

That’s extremely odd. Is there any chance I can get you to send me a cut down example project where it’s happening for you? The screen-space texture doesn’t compensate for resolution changes like the cel lines do, so resolution changes shouldn’t do anything to it. I’d definitely like to fix it.

Edit: I think I might know what may help. Where you have “Print dots opacity” unchecked, you need to check it and enter “0”. The unchecked value is probably 1.

We’re almost there, I think ^^
The problem is confined only to the effect “NewSprint” with others seems to give no problem. The error it also does it with a new map, just put a postprocess.

Edit: Yeahh now is work, are always the easiest things to mess up everything :slight_smile: thank you very much again for your help, and yet your work is great

Success :slight_smile:

I’ll get those branches into switches ASAP.

It turns out there’s a bug with switches in post-process blendables, so the next release will have to wait a bit! There’s also another few improvements coming, such as the ability to flatten out the shading to give the scene a low-fi Disney look.

I’ve also created some nicer, smaller sample content that better demonstrates how to use the cel shader, terrain shader and water shader. It takes some inspiration from Jean Giraud:

I’ve submitted the cel shader for marketplace inclusion: Advanced Cel Shader Pack - Marketplace - Epic Developer Community Forums

Feel free to vote for it on the Trello Submissions board once it appears if you’d like to see it on the marketplace by going here and signing up: Trello

The earlier version will continue be available in this thread and on but if you want the latest and greatest, please visit the marketplace as it has a number of improvements and some great sample content.

And last but not least, thanks everyone who has provided feedback, sent me screenshots and helped track down issues!

Just another small update to the sample content that will be available in the marketplace:

After a request from Daren I’ve added the ability to use the custom depth buffer flag to exclude objects from shading. You can also reverse this behaviour and only cel-shade certain objects with the custom depth buffer flag. Unfortunately landscapes can’t participate in custom depth buffers, but you can work around this. The end result is that you can mix PBR style rendering with cel shaded content, ala Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

The options:

Normal:

Skull excluded from shading:

Behaviour reversed so that only the skull is shaded:

Many thanks again Antidamage :smiley: Exclusions option works perfectly!

Wow, just wow. These shaders are the bomb. Keep it up!

The good news is the cel shader is now under review for the marketplace!

I shared this one on twitter already (@Antidamage) but here it is again. This is the pirate from the sample content. You can play as him and run around the island.

And because I love doing this, here’s the non-shaded version for comparison:

Interesting :wink:

I started learning how to do this kind of thing myself last night, but I give up now, I’m just using this. Thanks! This is a really nice shader.

I think this will work for my game and should have some time to work on it soon. I’ll show you if if it fits my idea.