Blender 5.3 Just Changed Stylized Shading Forever — Transcript

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1. 0:00If you have ever tried making stylized
2. 0:01or non-photorealistic shaders in
3. 0:03Blender, you already know how painful
4. 0:05shader to RGB can be. It flattens all
5. 0:07your lighting down into a screen space
6. 0:09image after the render is done.
7. 0:11The moment you add more than one light,
8. 0:13your colors wash out, your shadows bleed
9. 0:15together, and you lose total control.
10. 0:17Blender 5.3 fixes this with material
11. 0:20lighting nodes. Instead of guessing
12. 0:21after the fact, these nodes give you
13. 0:23direct access to every light in your
14. 0:25scene. You get all the essential
15. 0:26properties right inside the shader,
16. 0:28light direction, color, [music] power,
17. 0:30distance, and shadow data.
18. 0:32Having that raw information lets you
19. 0:33build countless stylized styles. To
20. 0:35start, delete the default principled
21. 0:37BSDF. Add a light accumulation node and
22. 0:40connect its shader output into the
23. 0:42surface input of your material output.
24. 0:44Your mesh will turn black for a moment,
25. 0:46which is completely normal because we
26. 0:47have not fed any light into the
27. 0:49accumulator yet. Next, bring in our
28. 0:51three core input nodes, light info,
29. 0:53light evaluation, and shadow ray cast.
30. 0:56Light evaluation calculates how the
31. 0:58lamps hit your mesh normals. You can
32. 1:00keep it on glossy with roughness at one
33. 1:02or set it to diffuse. [music] Shadow ray
34. 1:04cast handles the actual cast shadows,
35. 1:06and light info gives us the lamp
36. 1:08properties like color and power. Now let
37. 1:10us combine the surface shading and
38. 1:11shadows. Add a math node, set it to
39. 1:14multiply, and plug the shadow output
40. 1:16from shadow ray cast into the top
41. 1:17socket, and the factor from light
42. 1:19evaluation into the bottom socket down
43. 1:21below. Let us build the distance falloff
44. 1:24so our lamps behave like real lights
45. 1:25instead of infinite laser beams. Take
46. 1:27the distance output from light
47. 1:29evaluation, run it into a math multiply
48. 1:31node, and plug distance into both
49. 1:33sockets to square it.
50. 1:34[music] Next, add a math divide node,
51. 1:37set the top value to one, and plug that
52. 1:39squared distance into the bottom. That
53. 1:41is our standard inverse square falloff.
54. 1:43Add another math multiply node and
55. 1:44multiply that falloff by the mask output
56. 1:46from light evaluation. So light cones
57. 1:49and spotlights are respected. Now let us
58. 1:51chain this together. [music] Add another
59. 1:52multiply node and multiply your surface
60. 1:54shadow branch with your falloff branch.
61. 1:56Add one more multiply node right after
62. 1:58it. Take the power output light info and
63. 2:01multiply it and so lamp wattage controls
64. 2:03the brightness to bring in the light
65. 2:04color. Add a mixed color node set to
66. 2:07multiply. Plug the color output from
67. 2:09light info into input A and plug your
68. 2:11lighting chain into input B. Take the
69. 2:13result of that mix node and plug it
70. 2:15straight into the diffuse light input on
71. 2:16light accumulation. Look at your
72. 2:18viewport now. Your model lights up. We
73. 2:20have completely rebuilt real physical
74. 2:22lighting per lamp using nodes. Now comes
75. 2:25the cell shading step. Drop a color ramp
76. 2:27right between that first multiply node
77. 2:29and the rest of your chain. Plug your
78. 2:31multiplied shadow factor into the color
79. 2:33ramp factor and switch the interpolation
80. 2:35from linear to constant. Plug the color
81. 2:37ramp output back into the chain. Just
82. 2:39like that, your shading snaps into
83. 2:41crisp, razor-sharp anime bands. Pull the
84. 2:43white flag slightly to dial in where you
85. 2:46want your shadow boundary to sit. If you
86. 2:48grab your lamp and move it around the
87. 2:49scene, you can see the cell shading
88. 2:51track the light in real time while
89. 2:52maintaining accurate distance falloff
90. 2:54and sharp cast shadows. Now that we have
91. 2:56our clean cell shader working, let us
92. 2:58take it a step further and turn it into
93. 3:00a stylized painterly shader. We do not
94. 3:02need to rebuild anything from scratch.
95. 3:04[music] We are building directly on top
96. 3:06of the same node tree with just a few
97. 3:08additions to break that clean mechanical
98. 3:10cutoff into organic texture brush
99. 3:12strokes. The secret to this technique is
100. 3:14modifying the normal input on our light
101. 3:16evaluation node. Right now, light
102. 3:18evaluation is reading the smooth surface
103. 3:20normals of our geometry. If we inject
104. 3:22texture directly into those normals, the
105. 3:24lighting evaluation and the sharp cell
106. 3:26cutoff will naturally warp along the
107. 3:28texture.
108. 3:29First, add a geometry node and a Voronoi
109. 3:31texture. Connect the position output
110. 3:33from geometry into the vector input of
111. 3:35your Voronoi texture. Next, [music] add
112. 3:37a mixed color node and change the
113. 3:38blending mode to linear light. Plug the
114. 3:40normal from your geometry node into
115. 3:42input A and plug the color from your
116. 3:44Voronoi texture into input B. Take the
117. 3:46result of that linear light node and
118. 3:48plug it directly into the normal input
119. 3:50of light evaluation.
120. 3:51Right now, the effect will look too
121. 3:53harsh, so drop the factor down to around
122. 3:550.1 or 0.2. Look at your viewport now.
123. 3:58The perfectly smooth cell line instantly
124. 4:01breaks apart into bold, faceted,
125. 4:02painterly patches that catch the light
126. 4:04like chunky knife strokes. To make it
127. 4:06feel even more like real paint, let us
128. 4:08layer and finer brush bristle grain with
129. 4:10a noise texture. Add a noise texture
130. 4:12node and connect the position output
131. 4:14from geometry into its vector input as
132. 4:16well. Now add another mix color node.
133. 4:18Set this one to linear light too and
134. 4:20place it right before your Voronoi mix.
135. 4:22Plug the normal from geometry into input
136. 4:24A, the color from the noise texture into
137. 4:26input B, and feed that result into input
138. 4:29A of your Voronoi mix node.
139. 4:31Lower the factor to a round 0.15 and
140. 4:33tweak the noise scale to taste. Now we
141. 4:36have two distinct layers of painterly
142. 4:37detail working together. The noise
143. 4:39provides fine organic texture and
144. 4:41bristle jitter, while the Voronoi
145. 4:42creates stylized structural facets. Look
146. 4:45at how the shading wraps around the
147. 4:46contours of the mesh because this
148. 4:48texture distortion happens directly
149. 4:49inside the normal before lighting is
150. 4:51evaluated. The painterly marks react to
151. 4:53your lamps in real time. [music] As you
152. 4:55orbit the camera and move your lights
153. 4:56around the scene, the paint strokes
154. 4:58dynamically follow the light angle,
155. 5:00giving the look of a traditional
156. 5:01hand-painted illustration while
157. 5:03preserving all your real-time 3D
158. 5:05lighting, distance fall off, and cast
159. 5:06shadows. This changes everything for
160. 5:08Blender NPR. We are no longer fighting
161. 5:11the engine with hacks. We can finally
162. 5:13shape light like real paint and kick off
163. 5:16an entirely new wave of stylized 3D art.
164. 5:18>> [music]
165. 5:24[music]
166. 5:34[music]