Introduction
I’ve been working on an NPR node setup that aims to accept different light sources outside of the given in the color ramp. In a way, I developed an NPR that worked parallel as to how regular 3D lighting would, albeit with a few tweaks on certain angles. After a bit of work I managed to strike a convincing setup with an additional goal of hiding CG-ness as much as possible while making something appear rotoscoped, or even-so anime styled using rendering only from Blender Eevee.
I will call it the “Shine-D” shader as a way of shortening the terms shiny and dynamic (as well as how close it sounds to the term ‘90s’), which are the features of this shader. It also sounds better than calling it only "the shader" throughout the thread and outside of it.
This is the result
As you can see, the process of lighting an NPR model is no longer just limited to what is set on the color ramp, but all lights, including the world.
Guide
A .blend file containing the Shine-D material shaders will be provided at the bottom of this post. These material presets are the same ones I used on the vehicle animation seen above. You may need to tweak some settings to get the desired output you want though, as it’s not a one-size-fits-all thing.
If you want to make anime models use Shine-D, then you should take a look at F.4A and F.4B, as they provide tips on how to make the shader appear. A good example of a result would be the Rin model in F.4B. A full image is posted at the bottom of this post.
Shine-D doesn’t just work on anime models, but on realistic shaped characters to an extent. Now you too can make cheesey 80s rotoscoped dance videos. However, all rules that will apply to anime style shading may end up being challenged with these types of things, and will require their own rules of art.
Thanks!
Feel free to use this on your projects or to mess around with it. Crediting is optional, but if you happen to use the materials on a project or have found Shine-D to be a helpful start on one, it will be nice if you do! Feel free post some results in the thread too. I would love to see it in action.
Just don’t upload a copy of this somewhere else and call it yours.
You can download the .blend with the materials, the freestyle line-setup, and compositor settings here. Shine-D NPR.blend (1.3 MB) .
Demonstrative Showcase
Please note that none of the IPs here are affiliated with the creation of Shine-D and are to be seen as fan-art. They will not be provided in the .blend. Models used in this demonstration:
Rin - Merina
Scout , Team Fortress 2 (2009) - Valve
Foxbody - LoneWolfie
E34 - TheDanishMaster
