Intro
Cel-shading or “toon shading” is an intentional non-photorealistic rendering that is generally used to make 3d graphic content appear with flat colors.
A common theme of cel-shading which gives it that effective cartoon animation look is the use of bold outlines.
Cel shading is supported by two separate material components, the main difference being the amount of fine-tuning and detail control needed for a particular look:
Dual-tone cel-shading has a set of parameters to control Diffuse intensity, Specular highlights, and Edges.
Multi-tone cel-shading that uses textures to control Diffuse intensity, Specular Highlights, and Edges in far more fine detail.
Edge outline
The Animaze shader implements two outline methods that can be used simultaneously:
Dot-based edge detection - the edges of the same surface are darkened. This method uses the dot product between the surface normal and light direction and decides based on a threshold if a pixel is on the outline of the rendered mesh or not.
Expanded shell / Outline shell - the darkened outline is rendered on the exterior of the surface
Currently, both outline methods render a darkened outline, there is no support for tinted outlines.
Cel shading (no textures) - Dual Tone Cel Shading
it can be added in Animaze Editor as mesh component
Diffuse Threshold - light intensity threshold that decides between applying 1st and 2nd tone diffuse intensities
Diffuse minimum value - 1st tone diffuse intensity value
Diffuse maximum value - 2nd tone diffuse intensity value
Specular Threshold - light intensity threshold that decides between applying 1st and 2nd tone specular intensities
Specular minimum value - 1st tone specular intensity value
Specular maximum value - 2nd tone specular intensity value
Edge Threshold - threshold used by the dot-based edge detection method
Edge minimum value - the intensity of the surface that is not the edge (factorizes the diffuse and specular tones
Edge outline width - used by the expanded shell/outline shell method. Controls the size of the outline. Currently, the edge is always black.
Cel shading w/ texture - Multi-tone cel-shading
Multi-tone cel-shading enables a finer detail of the rendered surface through use of various textures, that control the intensities of the diffuse, specular tone, and dot-based edge detection.
Diffuse Tones Texture
The grayscale texture that maps light intensity (u coordinate) to diffuse tone intensity (texel color).
Texture used
Texture used
Texture used
Animaze shader samples a single row, so the size of the texture can be width x 1 pixel
Supports fine details by choosing to build the texture with steps or gradients
Texture used
Texture used
For maximum cel-shading effect make sure to use point filtering on texture (by default Animaze imports textures with linear filtering)
Specular Tones Texture
The grayscale texture that maps light intensity (u coordinate) to specular highlight tone intensity (texel color).
Animaze shader samples a single row, so the size of the texture can be width x 1 pixel
Supports fine details by choosing to build the texture with steps or gradients
Texture used
Texture used
For maximum cel-shading effect make sure to use point filtering on texture (by default Animaze imports textures with linear filtering).
Edge Tones Texture - used for the dot-based edge detection
The grayscale texture that maps the dot product between surface normal and light direction (U coordinate) to edge tone intensity (texel color).
Texture used
Animaze shader samples a single row, so the size of the texture can be width x 1 pixel
Supports fine details by choosing to build the texture with steps or gradients
Texture used
Texture used
For maximum cel-shading effect make sure to use point filtering on texture (by default Animaze imports textures with linear filtering).
Edge outline width - used by the expanded shell/outline shell method. Controls the size of the outline. Currently, the edge is always black.