Toon Shader

Version 1.0.0 for Blender 4.5 LTS to 5.2 LTS, Cycles and EEVEE.

Cel shading driven by your real lights: hard or soft bands, tinted shadows, rim light, toon highlights, outlines, halftone, hatching, dither, gradients, patterns and glowing elemental looks. It looks the same in Cycles and in EEVEE, so you can work in EEVEE and render the final in Cycles without the look changing. 195 ready looks in twelve categories: Essentials, Anime, Comic, Ink and Pencil, Painterly, Gradients, Patterns, Elemental, Metals, Tech, Game Stylized, Special.

What is in the package

Installation

Edit > Preferences > Get Extensions > arrow menu at the top right > Install from Disk, pick toon_shader_nh-1.0.0.zip. The add-on adds the asset library "Toon Shader" and a "Toon" tab in the 3D Viewport sidebar (N) and in the Shader Editor sidebar.

Without the add-on you can still use the library: Preferences > File Paths > Asset Libraries > Add, pick the Library folder, then drag looks from the Asset Browser. In Cycles you then have to set the scene property toon_engine to 1 yourself (the add-on does this automatically, see "Cycles and EEVEE").

Quick start

1. Select your objects.
2. Toon tab > pick a look > Apply Look. Every material of the selection becomes a toon material. Image textures, colour nodes, normal maps and alpha cut-outs (leaf and hair cards) are kept.
3. Add Toon Lights adds a key and a rim sun at the strength the looks are tuned for.
4. Toon Render Settings sets the Standard view transform, turns off screen space GI in EEVEE and makes the world visible to the camera only (the toon light comes from your lamps).
5. Outline adds an inverted hull outline (Solidify modifier with flipped normals); the X removes it. Make Toon converts materials without changing their settings.

The toon core (TS Toon Core)

Pattern groups: TS Halftone (dots or lines, screen or object space), TS Hatching (single or cross hatching, hand drawn wobble), TS Brush Edge (painterly noise for Shadow Offset), TS Dither (ordered dither or random stipple), TS Gradient (by view angle or height, banded, rainbow), TS Pattern (stripes, checker, grid, plaid, waves, polka dots), TS Cells (crackle and caustic lines, terrazzo, camouflage), TS Noise Paint (fire, wood rings, sand, clouds, crayon).

Looks with a pattern in Base Color (Patterns, Gradients, Elemental and some Metals and Tech looks) replace the colour of the material they are applied to; all other looks keep your colours and textures.

Cycles and EEVEE

The core contains two paths. Cycles uses Blender's Toon BSDF, normalised so a band has exactly your colour. EEVEE uses Shader to RGB with the same thresholds. The add-on switches between them through the scene property toon_engine whenever you change the render engine. Every look is rendered in both engines as a test; the measured difference is listed in the store text.

To keep both engines identical:

• Keep key lights near the reference strength (sun 3.14, or point and spot lights that give a similar brightness). Much weaker extra lights add a soft lift in Cycles but no band in EEVEE. Add Toon Lights creates the right ones.
• Use Toon Render Settings (no screen space GI in EEVEE, world not lighting the scene).
• Big flat floors look best with Rim Strength 0 (at grazing angles the rim would cover the floor).

Credits and licence

Designed by Nico Hartl with Claude (AI assistant). Every node group and look is defined in code, art directed and checked by a 3D artist. No textures, scans or third party node setups are included.

Node groups, looks and .blend files: royalty free for personal and commercial projects, you may not resell or redistribute them as they are. Add-on code: GPL-3.0-or-later. Details in LICENSE.txt.