Toon Shading

Toon Shading (CEL / Tone-Based)

Stylized cel rendering integrated into the deferred pipeline. Toon materials run through the same G-buffer, SSGI, shadow and tonemapping stack as PBR materials — only the diffuse ramp and specular gating change — so a toon character renders correctly inside a physically lit scene.

Enable with TOON_ENABLE in ray.conf:

Value	Behavior
0	Toon shading disabled (default).
1	Toon material support.
2	Toon material support with diffusion (adds the diffusion blur passes).

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1. Shading Models

Model ID	Name	Ramp	Per-material controls
8 (CUSTOM_ENABLE 8)	CEL	Hard 2-band anime terminator with a half-strength core shadow	customA — shadow terminator threshold (0..1), customB — shadow color
9 (CUSTOM_ENABLE 9)	TONEBASED	Smooth hardness ramp (0 = soft, 1 = hard cel)	customA — ramp hardness, customB — shadow color

Both models:

• take their band edges from the geometry shadow only — screen-space AO never smears the terminator;
• harden incoming soft PCF / contact-shadow gradients so cast-shadow edges stay crisp;
• gate the GGX specular into a stepped anime highlight keyed to the cel threshold;
• receive a flat 2-step ambient fill (IBL luma quantized) so the shadow side stays a clean fill instead of a smooth gradient;
• receive full SSGI — bounced GI is not quantized (a coarse ladder zeroed dim bounce light entirely; fixed in v1.16.0).

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2. The Materials/Toon Library

Materials/Toon/ mirrors the whole Materials/ tree: every material family duplicated as a ready-made cel-shaded preset (base color/alpha pulled from the model, CUSTOM_ENABLE 8, tuned customA/customB). Assign to a PMX material slot in MME like any other material fx.

Default shadow colors per family:

Family	customA	customB
Skin / body / TDA	0.55	float3(0.92, 0.78, 0.75)
Hair (incl. procedural presets)	0.45	float3(0.55, 0.50, 0.78)
Eye	0.70	float3(0.45, 0.42, 0.55)
Cloth	0.50	float3(0.62, 0.62, 0.72)
Foliage	0.50	float3(0.28, 0.42, 0.18)
Everything else	0.50	float3(0.70, 0.60, 0.75)

Notes:

• Editor/ is intentionally not duplicated; Programmable/Water and Programmable/Wetness are copied verbatim (legacy self-contained format, not cel-converted).
• Emissive templates stay emissive while the PMX defines an emissive color; cel shading takes over once it is zeroed.
• Base templates: material_toon.fx (hard cel) and material_tonebased.fx (smooth ramp). See Materials & PBR Shading for the PBR counterparts.
• v1.20.0 Features: All Toon materials fully inherit Hashed Alpha Testing (HASHED_ALPHA_TEST_ENABLE 1 for soft anti-aliased anime hair and eyelashes), Detail Normal Maps (DETAIL_MAP_ENABLE 1), and Hex-Tiling (HEX_TILING_ENABLE 1). Hair and Foliage presets expose HASHED_ALPHA_TEST_ENABLE out-of-the-box.

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3. Look Grading Knobs (ray.conf)

Global grading applied to CEL / TONEBASED shadow colors, ported from the community toon shaders (HAToon2/PAToon2, M4Toon2, Jashin Toon, T_ToonShader):

Knob	Default	Effect
TOON_SHADOW_MUL / TOON_SHADOW_ADD	1,1,1 / 0,0,0	Multiply, then add — global grade on every shadow color.
TOON_SHADOW_HUE	0	Rotate shadow hue in degrees (−180..180), luminance preserved (YIQ).
TOON_SHADOW_WARMTH	0	0..1 luminance-preserving warm push — anime skin shadows (T_ToonShader skin mode).
TOON_AUTOTINT_COLOR	float3(0.95, 0.80, 1.05)	Soft pink-lavender tint for shadows over low-saturation albedo (white clothes, skin). 0 = off.
TOON_AUTOTINT_THRESHOLD	0.03	Max base saturation still treated as colorless.
TOON_AUTOTINT_STRENGTH	1.0	0..1; tint scales with (1 − saturation).
TOON_SELF_POWER_SHADOW	0	Fallback for materials with no shadow color: pow(albedo, n), try ~0.98 (Jashin).
TOON_RIM_STRENGTH / TOON_RIM_POWER	0 / 2.5	Silhouette rim light folded in before banding, so it inherits the cel bands. 0 = off.

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4. Recommended Configuration

The approved "crisp cel" baseline:

// Toon pipeline
#define TOON_ENABLE 1               // 2 adds diffusion blur passes
#define OUTLINE_QUALITY 1           // Ray-MMD's screen-space edge outline
                                    // (works on models MMD's outline tab ignores)
#define CONTACT_SHADOW_QUALITY 0    // off — screen-space contact darkening smears
                                    // the flat cel shadow fills

// Look
#define HDR_TONEMAP_OPERATOR 8      // AgX — approved for toon; no need for Reinhard
#define TOON_AUTOTINT_COLOR     float3(0.95, 0.80, 1.05)
#define TOON_AUTOTINT_THRESHOLD 0.03
#define TOON_AUTOTINT_STRENGTH  1.0

// Everything below is fine at defaults for the toon look:
// TOON_SHADOW_MUL/ADD/HUE/WARMTH neutral, TOON_SELF_POWER_SHADOW 0,
// TOON_RIM_STRENGTH 0 (rim reads painterly), GI_ENABLE 2 (toon receivers
// get full SSGI), SSSS_QUALITY 1.

Tips:

• Shadows too dark globally → lift with TOON_SHADOW_MUL float3(1.1, 1.1, 1.15).
• Shadow hue off for the whole scene → nudge TOON_SHADOW_HUE instead of re-editing every material.
• Per-material tuning wins over global knobs: edit customA/customB in the assigned Materials/Toon/...fx.

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5. Render Examples

Standard PBR look

// ray.conf: stock defaults
#define TOON_ENABLE 0
#define OUTLINE_QUALITY 0
#define HDR_TONEMAP_OPERATOR 8
#define GI_ENABLE 2

Notes	Physically based shading: soft shadow gradients, skin SSS, IBL/GI bounce, AgX filmic color.

Toon look (same scene)

(same scene, Materials/Toon presets assigned)

// ray.conf: crisp cel baseline from section 4
#define TOON_ENABLE 1
#define OUTLINE_QUALITY 1
#define CONTACT_SHADOW_QUALITY 0
#define HDR_TONEMAP_OPERATOR 8
#define GI_ENABLE 2

Scene	Same model / stage / lighting as above.
Materials	Materials/Toon presets: skin, hair, cloth.
Notes	Flat shadow fills, stepped highlights, outline, GI bounce on cel bands.