Extended Shading Pro is a powerful and lightweight Unreal Engine plugin that gives developers fine-grained control over shading layer manipulation in forward shading render paths. Designed with performance and flexibility in mind, this plugin enables artists and engineers to create custom shading effects without relying on costly post-processing pipelines or modifying engine source code.
Key Features
No Post-Processing Needed: Achieve visual styles like toon, cel shading, halftone, and more without engaging the post-processing stack.
Zero Overhead: The final shader code introduces no additional performance overhead, making it suitable for performance-critical applications like VR and mobile.
Single Node Workflow: The plugin introduces a single configurable node within the Material Editor, simplifying the creation of layered shading effects. Chain multiple nodes to construct complex shading orders.
Plug-and-Play: Easy to install and integrate into both source-built and binary versions of Unreal Engine. No need for custom engine modifications.
HDR Not Required: Works seamlessly even in non-HDR environments.
Desktop & Mobile Support: Works seamlessly on both platforms.
Engine Compatibility: Supports Unreal Engine versions 4.25 through 5.5.
Examples Included: Comes with demo scenes and sample materials to help you get started.
Layer Processing Support: The plugin allows manipulation of the following shading layers: diffuse, reflection, specular, skylight, directional light, shadow, self Shadow, dynamic lights, dynamic lights specular.
Important Notes
Extended Shading Pro is a developer tool: it does not include production-ready shaders out of the box.
Fully supports forward shading rendering scenarios. Deferred rendering is not supported.
To take full advantage of the system, users should be familiar with Unreal rendering concepts and HLSL shader programming.
How to Use
Enable Forward Shading in your project settings.
Also enable Allow Static Lighting under the same section.
Install the Plugin.
Use the ExtendedShading node.