Boiling Outline Material is a stylized outline alternative designed to add organic, hand-drawn motion to your characters and objects.
Instead of a static, clean contour, the outline features a subtle “boiling” animation - a vibrating movement that evokes cartoon animation with hand-drawn frames. This effect brings life and visual interest to highlighted objects without relying on a classic hard outline.
The asset is provided in two implementations:
Overlay Material for Skeletal Meshes, ideal for characters and animated assets
Post Process Material for Static Meshes, perfect for props, environments, and interactive objects
This makes the material suitable for gameplay highlights, stylized visuals, interactable feedback, or unique art effects.
The material is easy to integrate, and customizable through exposed parameters.
Showcase video: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LuxBTpoURWk
Key Features
Two implementations included:
Overlay Material for Skeletal Meshes
Post Process Material for Static Meshes
Parameterized:
Outline thickness
Boiling motion speed and intensity
Color control
Easy to setup
Note:
The final appearance of the outline effect is mesh-dependent. Objects with clean, well-defined edges produce the best results.
Overlay Material - character's mesh should avoid excessively dense geometry.
Post preocess Material - objects with very soft edges may not display outlines correctly.
Project Settings Recommendations
For correct rendering, the following Project Settings should be configured as listed below:
- Postprocessing > CustomDepth-Stencil Pass > Enabled with Stencil
- Custom Depth with TemporalAA Jitter > enabled
- Temporal Upsampling > enabled
- Anti-Aliasing Method > TAA