Gradient Fresnel shading for Cinematic Lighting (SW:TOR inspired)

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

Had this around for a while and decided to update and share it with the community.

“During the Unreal 4 Beta I experimented a lot with materials, one of these experiments was inspired by Star Wars: The Old Republic’s cinematic character lighting presentation. I wondered how their ambient fresnel shading could be replicated in Unreal 4 and ended up with something that closely resembles the original shading results. After several months of leaving it in an abandoned project I decided it could be of use for the Unreal 4 Community and build a demo with some new features (Z-clamped fresnel and simplied to single Material Function)”

link: http://www…com/gradient-fresnel-shading-for-cinematic-lighting-in-unreal-4/

http://www…com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/GradientFresnel_Ribbons_01.gif

http://i0.wp.com/www..com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/gradientfresnel_character.jpg?zoom=1.5&resize=960%2C690

Hope you guys enjoy the post and find some use for this effect (or perhaps learn something from it :))

Edit: The full demo scene is available for download here. If you only want the material function and some basic sample assets there is download link on the bottom of the article.

2

Thanks, Tom! Very cool stuff as usual.

3

Awesome! Good job! And thanks for sharing.

4

[FONT=Comic Sans MS]Thank You Tom!

When I saw your demo pic in the picture sharing thread I must say I thought “oh I hope I hope I hope he shares it!”

And you did!

Woohoo!

And by the way everyone he left extremely detailed and helpful comments in his ambient fresnel material, very well commented!

Thanks Tom!

Now I can add rainbows to everything!

:heart:

5

You’re welcome guys! It was an interesting experiment and first time I used material functions, which are super nice by the way :slight_smile: We might start using this on our characters to get more definition (we only have a single directional light source at this moment)

Anyway hope you guys enjoy!

6

Another fantastic job Tom! Thanks for sharing the Demo as well. I will have to give it a try later on in the day. Keep up the great work!

7

Thank Tom , like good info in your http://www…com/

8

Thanks Sean! I intend to keep adding my samples, experiments & demos to the githubrepo (as sort of my own version of “Content Samples” which I love to browse through)

9

This is awesome. Its such a neat effect and I can see how all of the neat uses it can have. It would be a really neat shader technique to try and apply to something like a Planet to really emphasize an atmosphere and rim lighting. On another note, I never even noticed that SW:TOR did this until you mentioned it xD

10

Can’t be unseen! :stuck_out_tongue: Works great for stylized games, we’ll be experimenting how and if it fits with our own game in the future :slight_smile: Simply made it as a personal experiment a while ago after reading the presentation on the subject.