Video summary

Create a Toon Shader in Blender in 1 Minute!

Main summary

Key takeaways

Art and Creativity

Summary of What’s Shown

The video demonstrates a fast “toon shader” workflow in Blender, creating a flat, cel-shaded look with controllable shadow bands and a stylized outline. It walks through building a custom node-based material, then configuring render color management and adding a solidify-based outline.

Artistic Techniques / Creative Concepts Shown

  • Toon/Cel Shading via a node graph:
    • Flat color bands using Constant interpolation.
  • Lighting-to-Color Remapping using:
    • Color Ramp to quantize tonal values.
    • Shader to RGB to extract lighting/shading for stylization.
  • Shadow Band Control by adjusting the copied ramp values (dividing by three) to create a stronger, more stylized shadow region.
  • Outline Creation using Backface culling + Solidify:
    • Render backfaces and inflate geometry to form edges.

Step-by-Step (As Described in the Subtitles)

Set Up Lighting

  • Add a sunlight and position it as desired.
  • Set its strength to 5.

Create the Toon Material (Node Setup)

  • Delete the Principled BSDF.
  • Add a ColorRamp and connect it to the output.
  • Add a Shader to RGB node and connect it to the ColorRamp.
  • Add a Diffuse BSDF and connect it to the Shader node.
  • Set interpolation to Constant (for hard cel steps).
  • Select the appropriate pin and set its position to 0.5.
  • Pick a color for the light tone:
    • Hover and press Ctrl + C (copy color/value).
  • Select the other color slot/pin and press Ctrl + V (paste).
  • Open the pasted value and divide by 3 to create the shadow tone.
  • Adjust shadow size and position by moving/adjusting ramp/lighting values as desired.

Render / Color Management

  • In Render Properties → Color Management:
    • Set Transform to Standard.

Create the Outline Material

  • Add a new material.
  • Set Surface to Emit/Miss (as stated: “miss Mission”).
  • Set the color to Black.
  • Enable Backface coloring.
  • Set Shadow to None.

Add Geometry for the Outline

  • Add a Solidify modifier.
  • Set normals to flip.
  • Set material offset to 1.
  • Adjust thickness of the outline to preference.

Creators / Contributors Featured

No specific creator names are mentioned in the provided subtitles.

Original video