Any good toon shading and outline tutorial recommendation for UE5?

[unreal_toon_learner]

I am looking for tutorial to make toon shading and outline in UE5.

Currently I found several methods, like postprocessing or emissive material (unlit) for the actor.

But all of them have their own cons.

So I am asking do you know any method which you think is the best toon shader in UE?

Thanks

PS. this may be a side question. Why UE doesn’t have default toon shader? There are many games using UE also use toon shading, like Guilty Gear, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot , Tales of Arise, Sifu, Scarlet Nexus, etc. So I also wonder how they achieve their toon shading works

[SupportiveEntity]

Hey there @unreal_toon_learner! Welcome to the community! So I’ll drop you a couple of personal favorites. I personally recommend the material based ones instead of mixing in post processing, because it’s more viable for multiple platforms and (usually) less expensive.

Disclaimer: These links are to external tutorials by members of the community not affiliated with Epic Games. This said, you are liable for anything that occurs beyond this Unreal Engine domain.

Post Processing Based Cel Shading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQhdbH8O7Oc

Material Based: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4ur9c8H6AI

A thread where a community member came very close to perfecting a really nice one. Probably better as reference since the pop in for range is less fun. Material-based cel-shading with support for multiple light sources

@unreal_toon_learner

PS. this may be a side question. Why UE doesn’t have default toon shader? There are many games using UE also use toon shading, like Guilty Gear, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot , Tales of Arise, Sifu, Scarlet Nexus, etc. So I also wonder how they achieve their toon shading works

The engine team has a pretty strong focus on the tech side of things usually, getting extra content in usually comes in as templates. Otherwise many users never end up using or seeing them. I thought one of the old content examples had a cel shaded material, but I could be wrong on that.

Hope this helps and happy creating!

[Quetzalcodename]

Hey @unreal_toon_learner! Welcome to the Forums!

To add on just a bit more to @SupportiveEntity, while UE may not have a default toon shader there is also the Unreal Marketplace at your disposal. There are great resources there like:

ABC's Cel/Toon Shader V3 in Visual Effects - UE Marketplace

and

Painterly Cel Toon Outline Post Process Material in Visual Effects - UE...

There are a lot of awesome products put out by the community, so the Marketplace is a great resource to keep in mind as well!

[L.F.A]

@anonymous_user_50cf36e81

Why UE doesn’t have default toon shader?

Hi there,
Welcome.

This one is a free toon shader distributed in a previous post:

[Free] Effective Anime/Toon Shader For Unreal Engine 4-5

Hello there! This MToon Shader is based on VRM4U Plugin by ruyo, we cleaned the original shader and organized it with modular material functions, now it is easy for custom modifications, no plugins needed to use this shader. Shader can be used to make models look like stylized Toon. Anime. VRoid. VTuber. Very customizable and works without post-process. You can download it and use for free, no plugins are needed to use the shaders in your projects, works on UE4.24+ Including 5.0 Links: VRM S…

Actually, UE offers a tutorial for “Stylized Rendering” with a sample project available at Unreal Online Learning below. I am not sure if is exactly the same look you’re looking for.

Course: Stylize Renders with Post Process Materials

This course teaches strategies for non-technical animators and artists to achieve stylized renders with post-process Materials. Learn the theory, methodology, and tools to experiment in your own projects. https://dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/courses/qyl/unreal-engine-stylize-renders-with-post-process-materials

Here you can download the asset pack:
Stylize Renders with Post Process Materials in UE Online Learning - UE Marketplace (unrealengine.com)

Hope that helps.