Trying to make Toon Shader Material on UE4

[mrcrocker]

Just wanted to say thanks to all the contributions in this thread I found it very helpful (especially the anime shader shared by Brian Westley! thank you!).

Using information from this thread I’m starting to reach a point where I’m happy with the shading on the main character so I thought I would share.

Left is shaderless and right is with shader (Masked using custom stencil)

[Balmung]

I have rebuild the Shader from the japanese Blog above. I must say I like it, because it is not a PostProcess Shader, it is a Material Shader. So you have more control over different Materials (hair highlight Shading only on the hair for example, you can see it on the pictures). Also you can set in the Shader itself the light direction.

[motorsep]

@alwei;406887

I am Japanese developer.
Using this anime shader,Repeated the test and created the following video.

QjLDm7Ku-aI

Also take advantage of further toon shader of the following thread.
Toon shading model - Game Development - Epic Developer Community Forums

I’m very happy with this result.
This result is bring new possibilities to UE4.
Want to see more things like this.
I’m grateful to a lot of cooperation!

OMG! This is awesome!

Is it mobile friendly ?

Is it available to the public ?

[anonymous_user_c35282c1]

@Balmung;423561

I have rebuild the Shader from the japanese Blog above. I must say I like it, because it is not a PostProcess Shader, it is a Material Shader. So you have more control over different Materials (hair highlight Shading only on the hair for example, you can see it on the pictures). Also you can set in the Shader itself the light direction.

Nice! Could you please share the shader setup? That would definitely help a lot of people here…

[Balmung]

I have only rebuild the cell shader, the outline shader is a postprocess one and seams it didn’t work anymore (i have much flickering with it and it looks not good), so I use one of the other outline shaders here in the forum in combination with this material cell shader.

It is not difficult to rebuild the cell shader. I self are not really good with BP so far, but I could rebuild it. You only need Part 2+3 for the cell shader, 4 is the edge shader that didn’t work for me and 1 is only a overview blog entry.

[anonymous_user_c35282c1]

OK, thank you for the hint. I’ll try it when I have time.

So those are the two blueprints i need to rebuild, is that correct?

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-euusLErkvow/VQ8XaBF0CTI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/DMOhak_d8-k/s1600/MF_Toon.png

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CtKoti6ZB6s/VQ8VlCe9XvI/AAAAAAAAAUA/tp_qPpzj9dQ/s1600/%E3%82%AA%E3%83%96%E3%82%B8%E3%82%A7%E3%82%AF%E3%83%88%E3%83%9E%E3%83%86%E3%83%AA%E3%82%A2%E3%83%AB.png

[ogimafu]

Thank you for referring to my blog!
And sorry only in Japanese.

[Balmung]

We have to thank you for this awesome Material Shader.

Could it be that the outline shader on your blog did not work with UE4.9 anymore and need some changes?

Cool picture. ^^

@substract;426368

OK, thank you for the hint. I’ll try it when I have time.

So those are the two blueprints i need to rebuild, is that correct?

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-euusLErkvow/VQ8XaBF0CTI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/DMOhak_d8-k/s1600/MF_Toon.png

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CtKoti6ZB6s/VQ8VlCe9XvI/AAAAAAAAAUA/tp_qPpzj9dQ/s1600/%E3%82%AA%E3%83%96%E3%82%B8%E3%82%A7%E3%82%AF%E3%83%88%E3%83%9E%E3%83%86%E3%83%AA%E3%82%A2%E3%83%AB.png

No, you need all BPs on this two Blog Entries.

3 Material Functions
1 Material
1 “LookUP” Texture (its on the website, the one that is half black and half white)
1 selfmade Texture based on the Description below the “LookUP” Image (that black one with red, green and yellow)

The last one must match your 3D model so far if I had understand this right, that is the part that I didn’t do it yet. The green part is for Hair highlighting, the red part for Texture shadow.

[anonymous_user_c35282c1]

OK, thank you! I got it working

[GraciCebola]

I tried a lot of different methods from this and other threads and they work, but I’ve got some issues.

1. I can’t get the edges to be showing all the time on the execution. No matter which method I use, everytime I move the camera more than gently, it seems it takes a sec for the edge to appear again
2. Sometimes it happens that some edges create an invisible extra edge of the same width which blocks other edges to render side by side.

Help =((

[Balmung]

1. is an issue of the “temporal AA” AntiAliasing filter, if you switch it of this problem is gone but than you have no AA on it, looks not so good. I don’t know if this is gone when you build a standalone version of your project.

2. can you show a picture about that?

[anonymous_user_ba12bf59]

It’s been a while since this thread has been updated, I’m interested in what everybody is up to.

The developers behind Bloodstained (UE4) are employing a nice Cel Shader

Before:

After:

[motorsep]

Really nice!

Can you please share the setup? Is it mobile/VR friendly ?

[Kingfirejet]

@substract;428320

OK, thank you! I got it working

Is there an English reference version of the blueprints and materials? I can’t seem to achieve the same effect, probably because I’m still new to UE4 xD

[JuicyCupcake]

@mrcrocker;419879

Just wanted to say thanks to all the contributions in this thread I found it very helpful (especially the anime shader shared by Brian Westley! thank you!).

Using information from this thread I’m starting to reach a point where I’m happy with the shading on the main character so I thought I would share.

Left is shaderless and right is with shader (Masked using custom stencil)

Wow. This is the exact shader/material style I am looking for. Any chance you’d your material/shader setup and settings? It would be a huge help.

[Balmung]

Does anyone with more experience looked at 4.11 so far? There is some new shading stuff, but I don’t know if anything is interesting for cel shading.

• Rendering Updates:

• New physically based shading model for realistic hair based on the latest research from film. It models 2 specular lobes, transmission, and scattering.

• New physically based shading model for eyes.

• New physically based shading model for cloth. This combines the standard shading model with a layer of velvet fibers. This layer simulates fuzz and fabrics.

• Capsule Shadows - We now have support for very soft indirect shadows cast by a capsule representation of the character

• Per-vertex translucency lighting - There are two new translucency lighting modes available in the material editor which compute lighting per-vertex. PerVertex lighting modes use half as many shader instructions and texture lookups.

• We now have support for 3 lighting channels. You can set which channels a PrimitiveComponent or a LightComponent is in.

@MohdNadjib760: looks awesome.

[Jujaswe]

Has anyone been able to replicate the anime shader by the Japanese guy? That would be really helpful

[Balmung]

The cel shader, yes, but not the outline shader (on UE4.9). And I don’t know if I have the permission to upload it for others. Thats why I only post some helpings above. It is not really difficult to recreate it, if I could do this with my still very basic UE4 skills, than everyone should be able to do this.

[anonymous_user_ba12bf59]

The team behind Bloodstained have posted this video:

youtube.com/djiqVFnS30g

[anonymous_user_9308b33e]

Here’s my initial attempt at a flat cel material. It does what the Guilty Gear material does plus a couple extra things. It’s just a material, no post processing filter yet.