Improving our toon shader

Up to this point, we have set up the basis of a toon shader to have a custom cel-shading system. To bring it further, we can explore another common feature for cartoon renders, and discuss how to use the Shader Graph tools to organize our graph better.

So, in the following sections, we will add an outline to our shader, and see some interesting techniques to make our shader easier to read and use.

Adding an outline to our shader

Many toon shaders combine the cel-shading with a contour to remind of the aesthetics of comics. This can give your render a nice look, and it is also a good way to highlight the characters, or the important elements in your scene and separate them from the background.

To give you an idea of how it impacts the visual, Figure 5.27 shows what our scene will look like with the new outline feature applied:

Figure 5.27 – Small scene using our toon shader with its new outline feature

To create...