So I’ve been bouncing my Cel Shader off of several keen forum-goers for a couple of months now and it’s reached a point where I’d like to share it with a wider audience.
I may have botched my write-up slightly and failed to mention that the pack contains a cel shader with over 40 shader controls, 6 shader presets and landscape and water shaders suitable for use with the cel shader. I even built a sample level. To begin using it is easy - just add a post-process volume and assign a cel shader preset. You’re done.
This release contains many improvements that the previously shared development version of my cel shader doesn’t contain. The original version will be left up on GitHub as a standalone post-process effect tutorial free for anyone to download, but if you want the real goods the marketplace edition is where it’s at. Epic has also assured me that I can continue to release updates to the cel shader as I come up with new ideas and there’s a few things I’m quite excited to implement further down the track as Unreal Engine itself continues to add features.
The cel shader runs well in benchmarks and offers real-world performance at up to WQHD (2560 x 1440) resolutions with a mid-range video card. High end cards are more than capable of displaying the cel shader at full framerate in 4K (3840 x 2160) resolutions.
My goal is to provide a cel shader capable of creating world-class, real-time artistic graphics normally associated with graphic novels and anime reminiscent of Jean Giraud and Studio Ghibli. This release marks some significant advancement towards production readiness.
I’m debating putting up a small help website with screenshots showing what each control does. What do you guys think? Would you use a resource like that or do you prefer to come to the forums for help specific to issues you’re dealing with at the time?
Features still to come as engine support arrives:
Switched branches in the post-process blendable
Fast Fourier Transformations for even faster edge detection
I’ve been following along a bit with the development of this shader, I think it’s a really good idea to put it on the marketplace.
One thing I would suggest is to take a look at other common cel-shaded games and try to replicate their visual styles with settings in this shader, then post side by side screenshots.
“I’m debating putting up a small help website with screenshots showing what each control does. What do you guys think? Would you use a resource like that or do you prefer to come to the forums for help specific to issues you’re dealing with at the time?”
I’d say, since we are all here, putting a guide on the forum or in the wiki would work as well as anything else. Of course this shader is pretty darn cool and I’d probably hunt you down (if I need more info, advice) no matter where you are.
Thanks
I think we both know what game you mean and I’m carefully avoiding being labelled as a copy. Nobody that I’ve seen is cel-shading this way yet so I end up dumbing everything down when recreating effects, whereas if you enable the entire suite you get a much richer result. It doesn’t just draw hard lines - almost all of the subtle detail in the screenshots above is coming from the celshader as well.
I think you’re right though, it could use more examples.
That’s a tricky one. Do you want one customer who pays $500 for a hero asset that covers their entire game, or 50 people at $10 a pop? I think most of the game industry leans towards the former as it’s the same money but less work in support. I’m sort of the opposite and actually considered releasing it for free because I want it to be used, but in the end realised I have a monthly subscription-software budget I need to cover.
I think the price I chose is casually accessible but also places value on the assets. I’m a huge fan of the indie pricing model that’s becoming available for software so in the end I targeted that.
I have a Oculus Rift ordered and it’ll arrive in about 6 weeks hopefully. I’ve been careful to use world-space textures rather than screen-space as much as possible so there won’t be odd depth issues when you view it in 3D, although I suspect I’ll still have some work to do with the print dots layer once I get my Rift. I guarantee it’ll be supported though.
Thanks for your vote of support! The hand-drawn look is something I’m all about.
Hopefully soon! I’ve signed some documents and sent through content (although I’ve since updated it some more) and I guess it’s in a queue with all of the other submissions.
Good to hear, I look already since two weeks from day to day if it is on the Marketplace now. I really want it.
Would it be possible, that the outlined Edges are limited only to some Objects like a Character? Often only the Characters and some Objects have such darker Lines and the Background itself not, like here:
That style of outlining doesn’t need a fancy shader - check out the Stylised Content Example on how to do this. It’s a different method that uses a per-object-shader. You could improve it by adding a Fresnel filter as well.
I guess I should say that you CAN do that effect in the Advance Cel Shader. It can flatten the fill colour and do depth outlining. If you’re not looking to do any post-process shader work yourself, this package will do it for you.
Guilty Gear Xrd is probably state of the art when it comes to real-time anime-style graphics and it was actually built in UE3.
If you or anyone else is interested in trying to achieve a similar style to Guilty Gear Xrd, I’d highly recommend reading the following forum post which contains a ton of technical information: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=121144
That can be any colour you like. The three controls are linear ramp-in distance, colour and overbrightness. It’s amazing for setting the tone of a scene.
Nobody that I’ve seen is cel-shading this way yet so I end up dumbing everything down when recreating effects, whereas if you enable the entire suite you get a much richer result. It doesn’t just draw hard lines - almost all of the subtle detail in the screenshots above is coming from the celshader as well.
The three controls are linear ramp-in distance, colour and overbrightness. It’s amazing for setting the tone of a scene.
