Flat colour shading for foliage

[Denvab]

I’m trying to create a foliage shader where the grass blends into the landscape and can only be seen on colour transitions/shadows. The best example is T3ssel8r’s Pixel art shader for Unity.

This is the best I could achieve on my own with and without my cel shader.

This is my current code for the grass. The virtual texture provides the landscapes colour, which is a consistent colour.

I know the cel shader needs for adjusting for sharper bands, but I’m not sure what adjustments to the foliage I need to make to get the desired results. Any pointers are appreciated.

[Roy_Wierer.Seda145]

Some keywords you are looking for are “color banding” “color stepping” “palette reducer” which are ways to snap colors to a set / range / nearest value. That way colors lit or shaded would snap to the nearest darker or lighter variant. I think it can only be done in post processing with UE though.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/shader-for-stepping-banding-gradient.700496/

List of software palettes - Wikipedia

I don’t have a ready example in shader code but it’s both commonly done in python for 2D images.

[Denvab]

I’ve applied my curve atlas that I had for my shadows to my colours in the cel shader. It works but in a hacky way.

I’ll still keep an eye out as I think something can still be done to the foliage normal, to stop the small unwanted patches of light/dark grass.

[Roy_Wierer.Seda145]

what if you fake it entirely with an emissive material?

[Denvab]

I think that’s what I ended up doing, I managed to fix most the the spotty colour issue mostly by editing the landscape itself. Once I make the band edges sharper then it’ll be good enough for me.