Using only Blender's internal procedural textures this addon gives you infinitely customizable anime-style assets based on common stylized workflows.
I have tried to synthesize and simplify different approaches to stylized assets that give quick, easy but versatile results. All of the objects can receive colored light from standard scene lights and cast dynamic shadows. This allows you to quickly tint or shade your entire stylized scene with global lights, but comes with a couple of catches (see: Limitations)
In addition to that, each asset comes with a customized driver control panel to give you access to all the most common settings (colors, opacity, texture scale etc) without leaving the 3D Viewport.
The assets are divided into categories for easier navigation:
Color1 - The first color in the color ramp
Color1Position - Default 0, A value between 0-1, the closer to the center, the more intense the color will be.
Color2 - The second color in the color ramp
Color2Position - Default 1, A value between 0-1, the closer to the center, the more intense the color will be.
DisplaceScale - The scale of the displacement texture, how wide do you want the hills
DisplaceStrength - The intensity of the displacement, how tall do you want the hills
ExtendX/Y - Extends the object procedurally to avoid tiling or repetition
GrassLength - How long is the grass
RenderMultiplier - This number will be applied to the total number of grass particles during rendering, set to 1 if you want your grass to appear exactly as it does in the viewport, set up to 1000 to compensate for sparse coverage, or to give a painterly look
BigRippleScale - The size of the large distortions
BigRippleSpeed - The speed of the large distortions - Driver Value
BottomColor1 - The first color of the bottom layer
BottomColor2 - The second color of the bottom layer, can act like a shadow for the top ripples
ExtendX/Y - Extends the object procedurally to avoid tiling or repetition
MotionX/Y - Moves the wave texture, all motion and speed controls affect both water planes in sync - Driver Value
SmallRippleScale - The size of the small distortions
SmallRippleSpeed - The speed of the small distortions - Driver Value
SurfaceColor1 - The first color of the surface layer, less visible when transparency is used
SurfaceColor2 - The second color of the surface layer, less visible when transparency is used
SurfaceColor3 - The third color of the surface layer, the ripple highlight color, always visible
SurfaceTransparentColor - The color of the water, itself
Color1 - The light color
Color2 - The shadow color
DisplaceStrength - The intensity of the displacement, how tall do you want the hills
GrainScale - How large are the grains of sand
GrainsDensity - How many grains of sand do you want
GrainsMix - Mix between grains and plain sand
Color1
Color2
Color3
ColorTint
CracksMix1
CracksMix2
DisplaceStrength - The intensity of the displacement, how tall do you want the hills
ExtendX/Y - Extends the object procedurally to avoid tiling or repetition
LinesMix
Noise1Scale
Noise2Scale
Color1
Color2
Color3
DistortionScale
ExtendX/Y - Extends the object procedurally to avoid tiling or repetition
LinesMix
NoiseScale
StoneRandom
StoneScale
Color1
Color2
Color3
DistortionScale
ExtendX/Y - Extends the object procedurally to avoid tiling or repetition
NoiseScale
RockScale
ShadowMix
CenterLineColor
CracksMix
CracksPuddles
DisplaceStrength - The intensity of the displacement, how tall do you want the bumps
Extend
LineSpacing
OuterLineColor
RoadBaseColor
RoadMotion
RoadTexture
RoadTextureScale
Brightness - Brightness of the rock texture
Contrast - Contrast of the rock texture
DisplaceScale - The scale of the displacement texture, how wide are the deformations
DisplaceStrength - The intensity of the displacement, how deep are the deformations
PatternMix - Blend between texture distortion patterns
RockColor - Color tint for the rock
BG_Color1 - The outermost color of the gradient plane
BG_Color2 - The middle color of the gradient plane
BG_Color3 - The innermost color of the gradient plane
BG_EmitStrength - The light intensity of the gradient plane, use with Bloom
BG_NoiseLength - The vertical length of the background noise, can affect the impression of speed
BG_NoiseWidth - Not to be confused with background width, this controls the width of the noise texture
BG_Opacity - Use to fade the gradient plane in/out - Keyframe Value
BG_Speed - How fast the noise texture moves - Driver Value
BG_Width - How wide is the central background color
LineColor - The color of the lines
LineEmitStrength - The light intensity of the lines, use with Bloom
LineLength - How long are the lines, from dots to lines
LineOpacity - Use to fade the lines in/out - Keyframe Value
LineSpeed - How fast the lines move - Driver Value
LineThickness - How thick are the lines, from thin sticks to thick brush-like strokes
Color
EmissionStrength
Transparency
Color1
Color2
EmissionStrength
GradientHeight
Transparency
CircleLocationX
CircleLocationY
CircleScaleX
CircleScaleY
Color1
Color2
EmissionStrength
Transparency
The shader trick I have used to receive scene lights on "emissive" materials comes with a couple of catches, but first, what is the trick?
Instead of using a color ramp or Emission shader before the Material Output we use a Translucent shader with a Normal node that has the Z-axis inverted.
This gives us global lighting now affecting what otherwise appears to be an emissive material, HOWEVER:
1 - It does not give banded light (like cel-shading), but traditional gradient light falloff, I think this looks good on the background objects in a scene, and can help set it apart from a character that has full cel shading for their lighting, but, in order to get banded light you must add a colorramp after the Translucent node, which negates all the light color in your scene.
2 - The other catch is, I believe, related to getting our color information from a Normal node: Certain colors of light are more powerful than others, Green is the strongest, followed by Red, then Blue. This can be compensated for in your scene by turning up the intensity on lights that appear too dim manually, but I have not found a way to fix it in the nodes, my attempts seem to just shift the coordinates of the light, rather than the color.
This addon would not have been possible without the techniques, hard work and generosity of many Blender users, including:
- Kristof Dedene
- Lightning Boy Studio
- Marius Oberholster
- Pierrick Picault
- lateasusual
- POLYCOSM
- LanceBeryl.Dev
- Loop
And thanks, of course, to all the inspired, dedicated and hard working artists and animators from Toei to Ghibli and all across the anime industry!
