Hey, thanks for the tutorial. These toon shaders are exactly what we were looking for. I'm the designer on a university group project and we've chosen a cartoon art style. I'll be using this, your outline and explosion effects in our game.
Awesome, Best of luck on your project im glad you find it useful! Let me know if you have any questions and thank you for the support, I really appreciate it :)
i like the stepping affect, gives flat vector colors some ompf... might need to do this inside of the individual shaders for what i'm intending which should(nt) be fun xD
I'm glad you found it useful! Hmm, that's odd. Does it work if you include it via the post process material? Multiple a "scene texture nodes" set to ambient occlusion with the current effect? 🤔
I dunno if anyone could help, but I made this shader and the sky is flickering and would probably end up giving someone an epileptic siezure, is there any fix (I'm in UE5)
Check against the distance/depth of the current pixel with a step node and if it's very very far away, like 400k, don't apply any effect just put the base pp0 scene texture in, check this right before u plug it all in to emissive, this should apply the pp to everything but the skybox
@@realityadriftstudio i didnt really see your message till just now but im back cause the shader didnt port from ue 5.3 to 5.4 and now im remaking it, at 3:12 when you change blendable location to before translucensy, i looked in ue 5.4 and it doesnt exist. i am sad now :(
Unfortunately they have changed this with 5.4 and there is no 100% fix, the closest setting will be blend mode: scene colour before bloom. Although there are reports of this changing the brightness of the scene 😅 I hope that helps!
Hey. Great Tutorial. Just a question. My shadows are moving a bit every frame. It probably has to do something with the floor nodes dividing the material into sections by light level and lumen itself, but im not rly sure. Do you maybe know the reason? Edit: It happens even if the camera is perfectly still.
Hey there! I'm not too sure but I'll have a look into it and get back to you😄 My only guess would be that the sample count/ quality of the lumen lighting is too low which would make the shadow "flicker" slightly, kinda the same as Ray tracing?
Hey there! Just as a follow up. I've had a look into it and it's a result of using lumen global illumination method. (I think it might be on a default). The issue is that lumen takes quite a while to update and it recalculates every frame which makes the shadows/ lighting move. Switching it off will stop the jitter but I'm not sure if that will mess up the look you are going for? I'll keep having a go to see if there is a solution for lumen projects 😄
@@realityadriftstudio yea i ended up switching lumen off. Was looking into stopping lumen calculations when the camera isnt moving, but that wouldnt rly work with multiple players and is complicated. Thanks for the help
Thanks for the excellent tutorial! I specially like the ability to customize the steps. One question though: my sun light is making everything excessively bright with the post process applied. If I reduce it's intensity to a minimum, I can see the shader being applied as I expect, but with normal intensity I get a very very white and bright scene. Do you know what can cause that?
Hello, I'm glad you find it useful 😄 First port of call, I would check the auto exposure and bloom in your scenes post process volume. They can sometimes blow out effects like this. I'm not sure what version you are on, 5.4 has changed a few things in the material editor. Could you send me some screenshots on our discord? I can have a look into a solution!
Hey man, I really enjoyed this tutorial and your shader is so cool. I was wondering if it's possible to create multiple shadow colours at different levels of darkness?
Hey there! I just had a look into this, very strange. I would imagine Epic will add these options back in or at least an equivalent. For now the best option is to use "scene colour before bloom". However I have seen reports that this option can result in slightly different outcomes. This tutorial was made in an earlier version of the engine! I hope that helps :)
@@realityadriftstudio Wow! I was scared for a second in the tutorial. I was like "uh oh, this video is only a year old, did something change?!" Thanks for the added info for the new update. I'm exited to use this sweet shader to pretty up my low quality models.
Hey there! Is your material set to unlit? This post process effect can't see unlit materials so to fix this, you can set your material to "lit" and pass your colour data into both the emissive and base colour 😊 I hope this helps!
Hey there! There are a few things this could be. First thing I'd recommend is making sure the sky boxes material is set to "Lit"and the colour/ texture is plugged into both emissive and base colour 😄I hope this helps!
Hello, love the tutorial, is there a way that the steps line be sharper ? for now i have some blurry effect ( noise effect ) at the transition between the steps . i would like to have them more sharp. Not sure if what i'm asking is understandabke . thanks again for the great video mate
Hey there, I'm glad you found it useful and thanks for the support! I might be wrong but I think it might be something on the lighting or anti aliasing side if it's blurry. TAA might be blurring things? If you could send some screenshots, I can have a look 😁
Hey there! Hmm I'm not sure, sounds like it's something to do with the depth pass. Is it flickering to and from the sky "image"? And does it depend on your distance/ view of the sky?
Hi, I'm having this same issue I think. The skysphere is flickering between colours, looks like it's always a darker colour, at first I thought it was flickering black but then I changed to a lighter skybox and it's flickering dark green
At 6:00, when creating "Sub Light," what does Left Click & S do, exactly? The shortcut isn't working for me, and I can't find any relevant documentation.
Hey there, sorry for the confusion! I'm glad you got it working though 😊 Here is a link to a bunch of good shortcuts/ tips: docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/AnimatingObjects/Sequencer/CheatSheet/
Thanks for taking the time to make this. super cool effect. But for some reason, i am not getting any of the original colors to come through. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated?
Hey there! You might need a more extreme value in the min/ max shadow values (sounds like the white value isn't strong enough) or you could remove/ tweak the power and multiple nodes just before the lerp nodes 😁
Thanks for the tutorial! Just a question. The skybox is "invisible" now. The sky and everything that is not directly lit by something is just blue. Any fix for that? :)
Hey there! Hmm, you could mask the sky with an additional custom depth stencil value. Which should include/ exclude the sky from the effect. Also, this effect doesn't play well with unlit shaders which the default sky is set too. So another fix could be to set the sky material to default lit 😁 - I'd try this first. I hope that helps!
@@jonathandevoy3510 I think it should be fine. The only iffy part is if the water is using a translucent material. It may still work fine however it won't show up on the depth pass. If this is an issue, you can switch on "output velocity" in your project settings and in the water material. This will include the translucent water/ object in the depth pass 😊 *Again I've not tried it with the water plugin, sorry but I hope this helps!
Hey there! Thanks for the support, I really appreciate it 😊 I've not checked the numbers however, there was no real difference in performance in both the test scene or in any current projects. One optimization would be to combine the outline and cel shader together though. But it is screen space based so it will be heavily dependent on the number of pixel you are rendering. I hope that helps 😁
Hey there! Try and stick a component mask between the vector 3 and the lerp and then set the mask to RGB😁 Alternatively, you may need to put a component mask just before the alpha and pick one of the channels on the mask.
Hey there! You could try turning the sky sphere material to "lit" mode. Unlit material aren't compatible with this method unfortunately 😅 I hope that helps!
Hey there! Just the standard directional light and skylight combo, however spot lights and point lights work fine too. Not sure about lumen or raytracing though, flickering may come from low quality light settings with higher amounts of noise? 😁
Hey there! Try setting the material to "lit" mode. If it's set to unlit the colour won't be included in the render passes 😅 You should still be able to use the emissive channel though!
@@ErikSepp no worries! Go into your material, on the left hand side, click on the drop down "shader model" and then set that to default lit 😄 I can send over screenshots too!
Hey there! Try going into the skybox material, setting it to default lighting and plug in the texture/ colour (the value that is going into the emissive colour) into the base colour as well 😁
@@realityadriftstudio I only use the built-in light source and the sky is dark, I also have customized a sky box and it's dark, is there a solution for this?
I'm from Indonesian and I'm still new in Unreal Shader stuff, I don't understand with this part 12:14 . Can you explain it, I stuck in that part because error🙏
Hey there! You need to put a component mask infront of the post process input 0 because you can only lerp between two of the same float type. The post process input is a float 4 and the vector (colour) is a float 3(vector 3). So we can remove one of the float values from the post process input by filtering it through the component mask and unticking the alpha channel. So we have RGB and vector 3 just like the colour, making the lerp happy ☺️
@realityadriftstudio I'm having an issue around this same part, but I can't get the error to resolve. The component mask going between the steps and the lerps alpha channel didn't change anything. Am I missing something? Thanks for the help
Hey, thanks for the tutorial. These toon shaders are exactly what we were looking for. I'm the designer on a university group project and we've chosen a cartoon art style. I'll be using this, your outline and explosion effects in our game.
Awesome, Best of luck on your project im glad you find it useful!
Let me know if you have any questions
and thank you for the support, I really appreciate it :)
Most informative ue tutorials I've found so far, keep it up!
Thanks, I really appreciate that!
I'm glad you found it useful 😄
Our of all the tutorials ive seen, this is the best by far!
Thank you! I'm glad you found it useful 😁
Nice functionality in the shader setup and a great walkthrough of how its build!
Thank you! 😄
i like the stepping affect, gives flat vector colors some ompf... might need to do this inside of the individual shaders for what i'm intending which should(nt) be fun xD
I've never seen the custom stencil set up like that, interesting.
Haha thanks, I'm glad you found it useful 😁
Thanks for the tutorial, appreciate it!
No worries, I'm glad you found it useful 😁
Thank you very Much , I hope more tutorials like this
Thank you for the support, I've got a lot more coming soon! 😁
Also, Let me know if you have any requests.
@@realityadriftstudio if u can make more about stylized envirment style . videos is rare about Stylized .
Thanks so much for taking the time to make a tutorial!
No worries, I'm glad it helped 😁
Thanks for a very wellexplained and wellpaced tutorial. Very inspirring. Good luck with your game.
I appreciate the support, thank you!
Very great and informative tutorial! btw for some reason ambient occlusion isnt working on my ue4
I'm glad you found it useful!
Hmm, that's odd. Does it work if you include it via the post process material?
Multiple a "scene texture nodes" set to ambient occlusion with the current effect? 🤔
I dunno if anyone could help, but I made this shader and the sky is flickering and would probably end up giving someone an epileptic siezure, is there any fix (I'm in UE5)
Hello!
Could you send me some screen shots of the issue over on discord?
I'll have a look, try and find a solution for you😄
Check against the distance/depth of the current pixel with a step node and if it's very very far away, like 400k, don't apply any effect just put the base pp0 scene texture in, check this right before u plug it all in to emissive, this should apply the pp to everything but the skybox
@@realityadriftstudio i didnt really see your message till just now but im back cause the shader didnt port from ue 5.3 to 5.4 and now im remaking it, at 3:12 when you change blendable location to before translucensy, i looked in ue 5.4 and it doesnt exist. i am sad now :(
Unfortunately they have changed this with 5.4 and there is no 100% fix, the closest setting will be blend mode: scene colour before bloom. Although there are reports of this changing the brightness of the scene 😅
I hope that helps!
@@realityadriftstudio thanks a bunch
Hey. Great Tutorial. Just a question. My shadows are moving a bit every frame. It probably has to do something with the floor nodes dividing the material into sections by light level and lumen itself, but im not rly sure. Do you maybe know the reason?
Edit: It happens even if the camera is perfectly still.
Hey there!
I'm not too sure but I'll have a look into it and get back to you😄
My only guess would be that the sample count/ quality of the lumen lighting is too low which would make the shadow "flicker" slightly, kinda the same as Ray tracing?
Hey there!
Just as a follow up.
I've had a look into it and it's a result of using lumen global illumination method. (I think it might be on a default). The issue is that lumen takes quite a while to update and it recalculates every frame which makes the shadows/ lighting move. Switching it off will stop the jitter but I'm not sure if that will mess up the look you are going for?
I'll keep having a go to see if there is a solution for lumen projects 😄
@@realityadriftstudio yea i ended up switching lumen off. Was looking into stopping lumen calculations when the camera isnt moving, but that wouldnt rly work with multiple players and is complicated. Thanks for the help
Thanks for the excellent tutorial! I specially like the ability to customize the steps. One question though: my sun light is making everything excessively bright with the post process applied. If I reduce it's intensity to a minimum, I can see the shader being applied as I expect, but with normal intensity I get a very very white and bright scene. Do you know what can cause that?
Hello,
I'm glad you find it useful 😄
First port of call, I would check the auto exposure and bloom in your scenes post process volume. They can sometimes blow out effects like this.
I'm not sure what version you are on, 5.4 has changed a few things in the material editor. Could you send me some screenshots on our discord? I can have a look into a solution!
great video, thank you man!
No worries, I'm glad it helped! 😄
I don't have "before transluncency"
Seems to be a ue5.4 issue, you can try and use scene colour before dof or bloom instead 😊
Hey man, I really enjoyed this tutorial and your shader is so cool. I was wondering if it's possible to create multiple shadow colours at different levels of darkness?
Hey there!
You could use a few " ifs" to create a ladder effect. Jump on over to our discord and I can send some screenshots 😁
@realityadriftstudio Sweet thanks!
Hi,
Do you know what we can use for the blendable location? Unreal 5.4 does not have after tone mapping to before translucency.
Hey there!
I just had a look into this, very strange. I would imagine Epic will add these options back in or at least an equivalent. For now the best option is to use "scene colour before bloom".
However I have seen reports that this option can result in slightly different outcomes.
This tutorial was made in an earlier version of the engine!
I hope that helps :)
@@realityadriftstudio Wow! I was scared for a second in the tutorial. I was like "uh oh, this video is only a year old, did something change?!" Thanks for the added info for the new update. I'm exited to use this sweet shader to pretty up my low quality models.
Hey nice video, but does someone know how i make it so that emissive colors are also visible? All my emissive materials are now black?
Hey there!
Is your material set to unlit?
This post process effect can't see unlit materials so to fix this, you can set your material to "lit" and pass your colour data into both the emissive and base colour 😊
I hope this helps!
I cant see the skybox anymore, what can i do too fix this?
Hey there!
There are a few things this could be. First thing I'd recommend is making sure the sky boxes material is set to "Lit"and the colour/ texture is plugged into both emissive and base colour 😄I hope this helps!
Hello, love the tutorial, is there a way that the steps line be sharper ?
for now i have some blurry effect ( noise effect ) at the transition between the steps . i would like to have them more sharp.
Not sure if what i'm asking is understandabke .
thanks again for the great video mate
it seems that disabling lumen help to remove that noise effect. but then i loose lumen which is kinda sad.
Hey there, I'm glad you found it useful and thanks for the support!
I might be wrong but I think it might be something on the lighting or anti aliasing side if it's blurry. TAA might be blurring things?
If you could send some screenshots, I can have a look 😁
awesome video! im having one issue though - the sky is flickering? any ideas?
Hey there!
Hmm I'm not sure, sounds like it's something to do with the depth pass.
Is it flickering to and from the sky "image"?
And does it depend on your distance/ view of the sky?
Hi, I'm having this same issue I think. The skysphere is flickering between colours, looks like it's always a darker colour, at first I thought it was flickering black but then I changed to a lighter skybox and it's flickering dark green
At 6:00, when creating "Sub Light," what does Left Click & S do, exactly? The shortcut isn't working for me, and I can't find any relevant documentation.
Never mind. I just now got the shortcut working by clicking LMB while holding S (I had been trying to do it by pressing S while holding down the LMB).
Hey there, sorry for the confusion! I'm glad you got it working though 😊
Here is a link to a bunch of good shortcuts/ tips:
docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/AnimatingObjects/Sequencer/CheatSheet/
My whole scene is just a super thick blue fog and all the colors and lighting is screwed up, how do I fix?
Im experiencing the same thing did you ever find a fix?
Thanks for taking the time to make this. super cool effect. But for some reason, i am not getting any of the original colors to come through. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated?
Hey there!
Hmm I'm not sure...
What kind of results are you getting now?
Could you send me your post process? I tried following the tutorial but metals are black and sky is black
Hey there,
Jump on over to our discord and I'll have a look into it for you 😄
If you could send me some screen shots, that would be fantastic!
what's the link of the server@@realityadriftstudio
@@LovelyBigga discord.com/invite/7a54YXTdD4
thnx alot for the info bro !!!
No worries!
Why does the shadow color appear as a filter/Tint over everything rather than only affecting shadows
Hey there!
You might need a more extreme value in the min/ max shadow values (sounds like the white value isn't strong enough) or you could remove/ tweak the power and multiple nodes just before the lerp nodes 😁
Thanks for the tutorial! Just a question.
The skybox is "invisible" now. The sky and everything that is not directly lit by something is just blue. Any fix for that? :)
Hey there!
Hmm, you could mask the sky with an additional custom depth stencil value. Which should include/ exclude the sky from the effect.
Also, this effect doesn't play well with unlit shaders which the default sky is set too. So another fix could be to set the sky material to default lit 😁 - I'd try this first.
I hope that helps!
@@realityadriftstudio thanks! I'll try that :)
I've been looking for this. THANKS! How does this effect megascans, static meshes and metahumans and also water; will it apply?
Hey there!
I've personally not tested it on Megascans but it works well on skeletal and static meshes so it should be fine😁
Awesome, and what about the water plugin? the basic one..@@realityadriftstudio
@@jonathandevoy3510
I think it should be fine. The only iffy part is if the water is using a translucent material. It may still work fine however it won't show up on the depth pass. If this is an issue, you can switch on "output velocity" in your project settings and in the water material. This will include the translucent water/ object in the depth pass 😊
*Again I've not tried it with the water plugin, sorry but I hope this helps!
My step colors are very grainy between each step, how do I fix this?@@realityadriftstudio
Thanks for the help. One question, this shader works well if you use lumen lights???😝
Hey there!
I'm actually not sure, don't see why it would have any issue though 😊 give it a go!
Hi, thanks a lot for your videos! Do you know to what extent that has an impact on game performance?
Hey there!
Thanks for the support, I really appreciate it 😊
I've not checked the numbers however, there was no real difference in performance in both the test scene or in any current projects.
One optimization would be to combine the outline and cel shader together though.
But it is screen space based so it will be heavily dependent on the number of pixel you are rendering.
I hope that helps 😁
10:30 you cant connect a contant 3 vector node to lerp without an error in 5.1 how to fix this??
Hey there!
Try and stick a component mask between the vector 3 and the lerp and then set the mask to RGB😁
Alternatively, you may need to put a component mask just before the alpha and pick one of the channels on the mask.
My skybox is black now how do I fix
Hey there!
You could try turning the sky sphere material to "lit" mode. Unlit material aren't compatible with this method unfortunately 😅
I hope that helps!
What Kind of Lighting setup do you use with this shader in UE5.1 im getting flickering with sky lights?
Hey there!
Just the standard directional light and skylight combo, however spot lights and point lights work fine too. Not sure about lumen or raytracing though, flickering may come from low quality light settings with higher amounts of noise? 😁
Can i do this in ue4.27 ?
Yeah, should work fine 😁
shader's nice, but emissive materials (maybe just those that have the emission multiplied) would appear just black, any way to fix this?
Hey there! Try setting the material to "lit" mode. If it's set to unlit the colour won't be included in the render passes 😅
You should still be able to use the emissive channel though!
@@realityadriftstudio I can't seem to find any "lit" mode option anywhere😅, where is it exactly? (I'm using UE4)
@@ErikSepp no worries!
Go into your material, on the left hand side, click on the drop down "shader model" and then set that to default lit 😄 I can send over screenshots too!
@@realityadriftstudio oh haha looks like I've already had that right, maybe I just did something wrong.. Thanks anyway
@@ErikSeppAhh fair play, If you need a hand, jump on over to our discord and I'll have a look😄
Nice!!
Do you have to do it every time?
Nope, once you have it built, you are good to go! 😁
Metals are shiny but black even the normally silver ones are black
Any reason why skybox is black?
Hey there!
Try going into the skybox material, setting it to default lighting and plug in the texture/ colour (the value that is going into the emissive colour) into the base colour as well 😁
@@realityadriftstudio I only use the built-in light source and the sky is dark, I also have customized a sky box and it's dark, is there a solution for this?
@@Chiuhao0880 Hey there! Could you jump on over to our discord and send me some screenshots? I'll have a look 😄
I'm from Indonesian and I'm still new in Unreal Shader stuff, I don't understand with this part 12:14 . Can you explain it, I stuck in that part because error🙏
Hey there!
You need to put a component mask infront of the post process input 0 because you can only lerp between two of the same float type. The post process input is a float 4 and the vector (colour) is a float 3(vector 3).
So we can remove one of the float values from the post process input by filtering it through the component mask and unticking the alpha channel. So we have RGB and vector 3 just like the colour, making the lerp happy ☺️
@@realityadriftstudiothank you very much for the explanation, now i gonna try it😇🙏
@@ariiqwicaksana5944 No worries, I hope it helps ☺️
@@realityadriftstudiofinally, it works🥳, thank you very much
@realityadriftstudio I'm having an issue around this same part, but I can't get the error to resolve. The component mask going between the steps and the lerps alpha channel didn't change anything. Am I missing something?
Thanks for the help