Node Cel-Shading

SolarLune · October 1, 2010, 8:10am

OK, I’m pretty sure somebody has posted this before, but here is my version of some cel-shading using Nodes.

This was a bit more complex, but it seems that they made some fixes to Blender, so the ramp settings work as they should, both in perspective and orthographic mode.

Dot product of the view and normal of the geometry goes into the Factor for the Color Ramp, which gets multiplied with the diffuse color and multiplied by the actual color of the material. This should allow you to use textures and lighting models (e.g. Lamber, Toon, Fresnel, etc) as usual, but have the cel-shading effect on top, so to speak. This means that the cel shading effect itself should probably just be black and white, or gray scale so as not to intefere with the “actual” material (though the example does have yellow coloring to show the highlights).

MaterialCelShadeDynamicFixed.blend (540 KB)

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BurningSniper · October 7, 2010, 9:12pm

good stuff

SolarLune · October 13, 2010, 9:04am

Thanks. It doesn’t really work with orthagonal view (only for perspective). To do orthagonal, take out the view multiplication, I believe.

aonegamer · March 28, 2011, 1:12pm

SolarLune":

OK, I’m pretty sure somebody has posted this before, but here is my version of some cel-shading using Nodes. If you’re looking for cel-shading, the center monkey is probably what you would like. Make sure you duplicate the node setup in your game (particularly the view vector * the normal vector). If you’re wondering why I multiplied the dot-product by 0.5, it’s because without that, you don’t have full control over the colors in the object (i.e. the colors only extend about 25% into the object. This way, you can have exactly the amount of color in exactly the amount of places. Note that this setup works, but I think it will only work on smooth objects.

EDIT: This is for 2.5. If you don’t have Blender 2.5, just download it, use it to see the node setup, and then duplicate that setup in your game, OR just see the node setup pictures here. It’s not very complex, and playing around with it can produce some good effects. The second node setup is for simpler cel-shading (just red and black, nothing else). If you want to mix a texture in, use a Color Mix node and multiply that with your outline finished node (just before it goes to the Output node on the right side of the screen).

Wow thats cool, thanx for sharing

SolarLune · March 28, 2011, 8:32pm

Thanks, aone. The reason I made this is that the normal GLSL ramp commands only affect around 30% of the whole mesh. I wanted a higher level of fidelity, so this is what I came up with.

dokuro · July 2, 2011, 3:56pm

and how can I aply this on a game? cos i press p to start the game and I don’t see the cell shading but on render…

SolarLune · July 2, 2011, 4:40pm

You don’t see the shading in-game? It should work. Perhaps you don’t have a GLSL capable graphics card.

dokuro · April 1, 2012, 5:59am

you can apply nodes to the game engine! how?

SolarLune · April 1, 2012, 7:54am

Well, you select the Node editor option for the material (it’s the little button next to the material browser; it looks like two nodes) , and then edit the nodes as you need to. What you output in the node editor will show up on the character. It’s pretty nice.

Frances69 · April 1, 2012, 8:02pm

Perhaps you don’t have a GLSL capable graphics card.

BluePrintRandom · August 15, 2014, 6:56pm

I am getting a black ball, is it work with the current blender build?

SolarLune · August 16, 2014, 1:58pm

It seems that they fixed some bugs, so I went and updated it. It’s working for me now in the current-ish build (re-download the blend file).