3 Simple Stylized Toon Shaders for Creating 2D/3D Artworks in Blender

foreign [Music] it's Kevin and I hope you guys have been doing well this video is about Shader setups which is a question that I get asked about pretty frequently I've done a few tutorials where I show different styles but I thought it would be good to compile the shaders from them into one video so here I'm going to show you three simple stylized Shader setups that you can do in blender 3D with Evie these are great if you're trying to achieve a 2d Illustrated look but in 3D I really gravitate towards that hybrid style because while I love the look of 2D I also like the depth and immersion that you can get with 3D what makes blender a great program for achieving this aesthetic is that not only does it have access to a variety of tools and is free it also has grease pencil if you don't know what grease pencil is it's an object within blender that allows you to draw 2D directly in 3D space which makes it extremely versatile for a variety of workflows and if you want to learn more about it you can check out my grease pencil course I release with CG boost and I'll have more info at the end of the video so many of my piece cases are set up the same way with some geometry modeled a stylized Shader applied to them and grease pencil used for more of the Illustrated elements and details now I'm sure there are more optimal setups for achieving non-photorealistic looks and depending on what you're going for and how intensive it is there's a lot more factors to take into consideration but I hope these are helpful starting points if you're new to this kind of work before we dive into the shaders there's a bit of setup that we'll need to do first so here I have a new blender file I just created using version 3.4 and I'm in the layout workspace the first thing we'll need to do is adjust our color settings so let's go to the render properties tab which is this icon here and again we'll be using Eevee as our renderer go down to color management and in the view transform drop down change this from filmic to standard this will change our view and allow the colors to appear more accurately according to the style we're going for also I generally change the look right underneath it to medium high contrast this is a personal preference but it helps to make the colors appear more vibrant going to the viewport let's set the viewport shading to material preview up here then click the drop down to the right of it and toggle scene lights and scene world this is important because the shaders can be affected by light sources in our scene going to the World Properties tab I'm going to select light warm color next we'll enable node Wrangler this is a free add-on that will be helpful for our node work in the next part if you already have it great and if you don't it's not completely necessary but if you want to enable it go up to edit at the top preferences add-ons search node Wrangler and click the checkbox to activate it then close out of this box lastly change the timeline down here to the Shader editor by clicking this button in the top left and selecting it from the list and now we're ready to start so the first Shader we'll cover is a simple tune Shader this is probably the most common setup and it allows you to achieve a cell shaded look when I was starting out with blender this was the setup I used the most because it was easy and effective in getting a 2d look it also paired well with grease pencil some pieces where I've used this setup is in this Nintendo switch piece and it's a bit hard to see where it's actually used here so I'll turn off the grease pencil Strokes for now so it's used on the switch mesh itself and the background and swirly motion lines are set up similarly to complement it and because of this Shader Simplicity it's a great Shader for achieving a variety of different styles most recently I used it in this piece to replicate a screen printed poster of the Matterhorn bobsleds at Disneyland but in 3D going back to our file let's set this up delete this cube with X and hit shift a to bring in a mesh monkey let's subdivide this monkey by going to the modifier properties Tab and selecting subdivision surface from the list I'll set the levels to 2. now a quick way to apply a subdivision service modifier with levels 2 is to select your mesh and hit Ctrl 2. with it still selected I'll right click and select shade Auto smooth now go down to the Shader editor and click new let's rename this to simple tune Shader zoom in and collapse the side menu with n here we have the default principled bsdf plugged into the material output for the bsdf we don't really need everything underneath it so you might see this setup with the diffuse bsdf instead but I'll keep it on the principled bsdf for now let's hit shift a to bring in a new node click search and type Shader to RGB then drop it in between the principled bsdf and the material output this node is specific to Eevee and is used for non-photorealistic rendering taking information from the bsdf node before it then hit shift a again and let's bring in a color round drop it right after the Shader to RGB node if we change this from linear to constant and move these sliders a bit then you'll see the look has changed this coverage is also affected by your lighting so the dark areas are a solid black and light areas are solid white which are determined by the color ramp you can change these slider colors to whatever you'd like and even add more colors now you can leave this as is but if you want more control over this coverage Beyond this color ramp you can go to the principled bsdf node and darken the base color or for more Precision you can select it and hit Ctrl T to bring in a mapping and texture coordinate node connect the vector output for the mapping node to the base color input of the principled bsdf and delete the image texture node with X then connect the generated output of the texture coordinate node and to the vector input of the mapping node and then you can adjust the coverage based on these mapping values now if you see these blurry artifacts on the Shader this is because of the lights in your scene if you want to remove those you can click on your light object and uncheck shadow in the object data properties Tab and as mentioned previously you can bring in other lights to also affect the coverage clicking back on the monkey there is many things you can do here for example you don't need to keep the color Ram constant instead you can change it to be spline to work with gradients instead also if you want to add texture on top of it you can bring in a noise texture node and a color ramp set the color Ram to constant and connect the noise texture color output to the color amp Factor input then let's mix these two color ramps together while holding Ctrl shift right click drag between them to activate the screen line and mix them if this isn't working for you you can just bring in a mix node in previous versions of blender this was called mix RGB change this from float to color and connect the original color ramp color output to input a and then connect the color output from the second color ramp to input B and then connect the result output of the mix node to the surface input of the material output going to the mix node change mix to multiply and adjust the sliders of the second color ramp until we see the original color underneath it this setup overlays a noise texture on top of the original tune Shader we created so in the mix node whatever is in slot B will appear on top going to the noise texture I'm going to increase the scale to 1 100 and now I have these specs on top of the tune Shader you can also lessen the coverage amount with the color ramp and adjust the opacity of the texture via the mix node Factor and that's it for this Shader now there's lots of other textures and options you can play around with and here are a few examples of what I've done with this and when pairing it with grease pencil it can easily complete the look you're going for so for example going back to this screen printed poster scene I have this bobsled modeled and then shaded with that simple tune Shader we just created then the more Illustrated elements like the writers here are drawn with grease pencil the next setup we'll cover is a textured gradient Shader this Shader helps to achieve more of a textured look if you've seen my Illustrated postcard tutorial or have done my stylized microscope tutorial over on the CG boost Channel I'll have links to those below this is the exact same setup some pieces I've used this in are in this scene of the Magic Kingdom castle and my haunted mansion scenery creation so when looking at that scene if I hide the grease pencil elements on the Mansion you'll see that all the meshes have this Shader applied to them there is a slight difference in that it has another texture applied to it but that's what's great about these shaders is that you can experiment with them going back to our file let's duplicate this monkey with shift d and shift it over to the left along the X we'll work on this middle one for now let's create a new Shader from this by clicking this number to make a single user copy and rename this to textured gradient Shader for now let's connect the original color ramps color output to the surface input of the material output moving to the left of the bsdf let's shift the texture coordinate and mapping node over to the left and reset all the mapping values so location and rotation are at zero and scale is one then let's bring in a gradient texture node and a voronoi texture node connect the vector output of the mapping node to the vector inputs of both textures and you can easily do this by holding down alt and right-click dragging for the mapping node to both of them then mix both texture nodes by holding down shift control and right click dragging between them [Music] switch the color inputs so the gradient texture connects via the bottom then connect the color output of the mix node to the base color input of the bsdf node going to the vorinery texture change this from 3D to 4D and set the scale to about 175. let's also connect the color output to the color 1 input instead and now we have a textured gradient Shader to adjust this you can change the scale of the vorinoi texture if you want the texture bigger or smaller going to the mix node you can adjust the texture intensity between the color separations so if it's at zero you'll have no definition and if it's at 1 you'll have a similar Shader to the one we just made if you want to adjust the coverage you can do that via the color ramp or for more Precision through the mapping node and again we can also use lights so I'll duplicate the light we have and position it in front of the monkeys to see them better I'll also change the colors of this monkey via the color ramp to differentiate from the first Shader we made and just like with the previous setup we can overlay a texture on top of it so I'll plug this result output of this mix node back into the material output and now we'll have those Flex we created previously to pair it with grease pencil you can use it to emphasize that Illustrated look so for example on this Castle I have this Shader applied to the meshes of the turrets walls and spiers then I have grease pencil drawn on top of those meshes to accentuate the geometry and supplement the more Illustrated details like the bricks the last Shader we'll cover is a watercolor like Shader I won't say it's an exact watercolor Shader because it's really not but it has a painterly feel this is the one I love working with the most when I was starting out with blender one of my goals was to learn how to achieve this procedurally and so I did a few experiments that I proved upon over time if you've done my 2D 3D cake tutorial this is the same Shader I've shown there some of my other pieces I've used this Shader in are in my explorers Treehouse and Anime inspired City so going to that file if I go to the buildings you'll see they all have the Shader applied to them there is a slight deviation here in that when the light sources hit the buildings the Shader shows different colors but I'll go over that in another video going back to our file let's duplicate this middle monkey and shift it to the left along the X we'll again work on this middle monkey with it selected click on the number to make a single user copy and rename this to watercolor like Shader like 4 plug the color output from the color gram to the material output let's also delete one of the color sliders so we only have two to work with and change this from constant to B spline and adjust the slider position so they're closer together going to the left of the bsdf I'm going to box select all these nodes and delete them with x now let's bring in a foreign or Texture change this to 4D and plug its position output to the normal input of the bsdf now bring in a noise texture node and a geometry node And to clarify not the geometry nodes as in the system but the actual node hold Ctrl shift and right click drag between them to mix them going to the geometry node plug the normal output into color 1 and for the noise texture change the scale to 10. then plug the color output into color 2. going to the mix node set this to linear light plug the color output from the mix node into the vector input of the vorinoid texture lastly select the noise texture node and hit Ctrl T to add a mapping and texture coordinate node and that's it for this Shader it's a very loose setup so depending on the look you're going for it can change drastically to further customize this I'm going to adjust the colors here to be warmer so it differentiates from the other shaders now if you want more control over the coverage you can just add a texture coordinate and mapping node I'll just duplicate the ones down here and plug them into the base color input at the bsdf then you can adjust the values accordingly you can also go back to the color ramp and change this from B spline to constant for another interesting look and just like with the other shaders you can apply that texture overlay like we did previously so I really encourage experimentation when working with this one now when thinking about using it with grease pencil it was pretty easy since grease pencil can lend itself to painterly Styles as well so here I have a work in progress Explorer's Treehouse inspired by Tarzan if I hide the grease pencil elements you'll see that all the meshes have this Shader applied I'll toggle them back on I was able to use grease pencils brushes to paint these elements around the meshes to make it feel as if they were situated in a dense jungle this helped achieve a watercolor like aesthetic so that's it for the shaders thank you guys so much for watching I really appreciate it and hope you found this helpful and if you want to learn more about Greece pencil you can check out my course I released with CG boost called Master grease pencil in blender there I'll walk through everything you need to know to get started with it and by the end you'll have created this medieval fantasy Village scene we're planning on adding more content soon and it'll all be included for free with the initial purchase price you can find the course on the CG boost website and I'll leave a link below if you guys have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below I am going to have video breakdowns of the three new pieces you saw in this video so stay tuned and if you do end up using these shaders in your work feel free to tag me on social media at Kev and RAM thanks again and see you guys next time

Channel: Kevandram

Views: 198,328

Keywords: blender 3d 2d animation tutorial, blender 2d 3d animation, grease pencil blender, grease pencil tutorial, learn grease pencil in blender, blender grease pencil, blender grease pencil full course, blender grease pencil animation course, non photorealistic rendering, non photorealistic rendering blender, blender grease pencil tutorial for beginners, blender grease pencil tutorial animation, blender anime shader, toon shader blender, toon shader, blender toon shader

Id: vRALvQSS1vw

Length: 15min 49sec (949 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 19 2023