Advanced Cel Shader Pack

[Vata Raven]

a couple questions

1) how do I stop everything from moving within the scene? The trees and rope stuff keep moving and it's just causing my computer to work
2) how do I apply these shaders to a scene/object?

[Antidamage]

I imagine you could pause the simulation, which will stop the wind and foliage effects (the ropes bounce around due to a cable but that still seems to be around.) They're probably not contributing very much to CPU overhead though, as the foliage transforms are done on the GPU.

I *still* don't seem to have done a basic setup tutorial on the website, I don't know how I keep forgetting. I'll write one on the site quickly now, but here's the overview:

1. Create a post-process volume in your world
2. Set the post-process volume to be "Unbound" near the bottom of its details pane
3. Just above that, expand out the "Blendables" section under "Misc"
4. Assign a new blendable item to the blendables list on your post-processing volume and select one of the Presets, such as "CelShaderDirtyManga"

That's all you have to do as the shader is a post-process effect. You can edit the material instance for the CelShader preset you've chosen to adjust its settings.

If you're looking at the sample island, there is already a post-processing volume named "CelShading Volume" or something similar that you can look at for an example.

Edit: good news, I'm just getting forgetful. There's a getting started guide on this page that I've just updated with marketplace asset instructions: http://skull.co.nz/the-advanced-cel-shader-pack/

[Vata Raven]

and I'm also a noob with this stuff, I just have Unreal installed, haven't really touched it, I'm more of a writer and designer for concept look, which is why I was trying to come up with a style for the world

Ok, the simulation is off, or so it says, trees still sway. There is a check-mark by the simulation action...not that it bothers me, but when the program is idle, the fan just runs like crazy

Edit: Started to play with the preset shaders, sort of interesting to see the effects when you stack 2 together

How do you edit the presets? I double click on 1 and a new tab opens. Is that the edit section? Anyway is can open in the current tab so I can see it edit in real-time?

[Antidamage]

Gotcha. The UE IDE will consume a decent amount of CPU cycles when it's in the foreground even when you're doing nothing - that viewport is updated constantly even if nothing is changing.

I was playing with two shaders stacked last night and was completely unable to get them to mix unless I used blending. The results were undesirable for me - what did you find? It's sort of like the priority field has no effect at all on custom post-process blendables. That said, if you make them bound again so they only affect a localised area it starts to work better.

To edit a preset, find it in the content browser under Shaders/CelShader/Presets. They're Material Instances, so you can duplicate them and edit the parent settings for each copy. You can drag that tab out to another screen so that you can still see the viewport. Just make sure the preset you're editing is assigned to the post-processing volume you're using.

[Vata Raven]

this combo works without any work, or at least they looked nice to me

Colored Pencil & Anime
Colored Pencil & Hero Comic

The Colored Pencil in the 1st slot. However, with some of the shaders, when I insert them into the 2nd slot, a bunch of X-es will appear

To see the X-es (maybe you won't get this issue) Place Anime into the 1st slot & Old Comic into the 2nd slot

[Antidamage]

Hmm, I'll have to check that out. There's a texture called star-hatch that might still be used by some of the presets as a print grain texture, which is probably what you're seeing. Feel free to post screenshots if something looks really great or broken.

[Vata Raven]

Is there a way to perhaps soften shadows so the edges aren't so bold? I guess the proper term would be soft-shade style, cel-shade traditionally has that bold shadow edge

[Antidamage]

If you're referring to the line-shading mask based on the Ambient Occlusion, yes there is. Check out the Shadow Power field.

If you mean inter-object shadowing then this is a normal UE function and you can soften this in a variety of ways. I was never particularly good at adjusting it, so it's a question for the wider forum.

[Antidamage]

One more new feature in the latest update: you can now fade all shading on the sky features, restoring them to their pre-cel-shaded state. You can now also control the outline bleed into the sky, which was previously bouncing between states every other update.

[Balmung]

Looks nice.

After months I get time to work with UE4 and your Cel Shader, but I didn't make anything that I could show now. But my first tests was not so bad, works good so far.^^

Do you work on a UE 4.8 Version?

[Antidamage]

Excellent progress

It looks like marketplace assets are automatically enabled for injection into newer versions of the IDE as I didn't submit at 4.7 release until the other day, but it's been available as an option all along. I suspect the same thing will happen with 4.8, but I already have more things I'd like to release soon anyway and that will be for 4.8.

I've been keeping an eye on the previews and nothing has broken in 4.8 so far.

[Balmung]

Means I can use the 4.7.6 Version for 4.8 too?

Will check this soon.

As Rift DK2 user 4.8 sounds really good, Oculus SDK 0.6, Oculus 3D Sound, 40% more VR performance and VR bugfixes...

Edit: Ok, test it with 4.8, but there is a problem with the outlines, use the Anime CelShader:



As smaller the 3D View in UE4 is, the bigger is this issue.

Edit2: I test all other CelShader and it only appears in the Anime one, all other seams to work fine.

[Antidamage]

It looks like you need to adjust your preset settings. Most of the presets will need tweaking depending on your scene size, depth, etc. In a very busy scene a hint of outline is more desirable than a screen full of black, but in a simple scene you'd probably want to strengthen the outlines again.

[Antidamage]

I've been working for a very long time on a blur component to soften the base shading and I've made some progress! This effect will soften the base colour that's used to shade colours, giving it more of a hand-lit feel. In this shot the shading is softened then re-constituted using posterization:






Softening the base colour also lets you create a watercolour effect where the colours from objects and surroundings bleed into each other:








This will be released in a forthcoming update!

[Vata Raven]

Question about a possible style

In the current state, is it possible to to mimic a watercolor style?

Skyward Sword is a good example of watercolor for concept art

Edit: Just looked at the pictures, and looked it said it's for watercolor, but they doesn't feel like a watercolor style to me