Blender ANIME Outlines (In 60 Seconds!!)

[@TheRoyalSkies]

I'd also like to point out that there are other outline methods which include doing some tricks with the cycles, EEVEE, BEER/Malt rendering. The main reason I recommend and prefer this method is because most every other software supports inverted Hull of some sort. So, you can get a pretty good idea of how your stuff is going to look in Unreal, or Unity, or wherever else you're exporting to - but when you start using post-rendering tricks, none of that can really export outside of Blender - So, keep that in mind when you are exploring other methods :)

[@pikachufan25]

Tell me more of your secrets xD

[@guohengchin]

THIS. Is the reason you're my favorite Blender shader KZbin channel

[@pop2147]

You can download blender outline node version available on gumroad. That method easier to use and give better outline. But since it's used in shader node, it cannot be exported. Unity and Unreal has its way to create outline via post processing.

[@ShiroiAkumaSama]

And you have Lineart (not freestyle) now in Blender 2.93 without any tricks or addons. :D

[@InterUse]

Is there a way to make an outline compatible with game engines e.g. Unity/Unreal? The method above instead of just adding an outline also adds a color of the outline on top of the material (influences the light coming through it, I guess).

[@M4rt1nX]

This kind of videos are extremely useful when you already know the basics and are looking for specific things. Thanks a lot.

[@nayeer01]

LEGIT!!!

[@bagboybrown]

Also, make sure you turn Shadow Mode to "None" in the "Outline" material.

[@blujayanimations5534]

Where is that?

[@bagboybrown]

@@blujayanimations5534 Hey, man. Just got out of work. Click the materials icon in your list (right above the checkboard which is the textures icon). Scroll down until you see "Settings -> Shadow Mode: Opaque". Use the drop down menu to change Opaque to "None". Only do this on the "Outline" material though. Hope this helps.

[@nubbyx8096]

@@bagboybrown i did exactly what you said but it's still just a black sphere can you help me out more? 😅😅

[@bagboybrown]

@@nubbyx8096 Oh, lord um.. It's been a while since i've done this one. I will go find you the info you need and get back to you, sir!

[@bagboybrown]

@@nubbyx8096 Oh, pretty easy. 2 step process but not hard. 1. Go to your Material Settings. Scroll down near the bottom and check off Backface Culling. 2. Go to your solidify modifier, check off the Flip Normals box. Now, adjust the "thickness" slider inside the solidify modifier to increase / decrease the size of your outline. If it still doesn't look right, It's because you need to change the number in your Material Offset within the solidify modifier. The way it works is as follows. Click your object. Look at the materials list on the right. Find your outline. Count how many materials are BEFORE your outline. Ex: If you have 2 materials and the outline material shader is on the bottom of the 2. it's number 2. So knowing this, go back to your solidify modifier you'll see Materials and Material Offset. Change that number to the amount of materials BEFORE. In my example the outline shader is #2 so the amount of materials before it in the list is 1. Change the Material Offset to 1. This should work fine now, but if not just hmu. :)

[@DiggoryJiggory]

Dude's putting all other tutorial channels out of a job and he's doing it in 60 seconds

[@GerardMenvussa]

"Not a problem!"

[@TheGamersState]

To be honest; I don't mind a tutorial that's of a decently long video like anything from 10 to 30 minutes but it's when they needlessly stretch it out that I hate it especially in this day and age when you can easily edit out things people won't care about.

[@carso1500]

@@TheGamersState long tutorials are good specially when you are just starting to really learn the fundamentals and how to do stuff like the legendary donut series of blender guru with literaly millions of people getting introduced to blender thanks to that series (i finished the series in 5 days and i already had most of the fundamentals thanks to it like hot keys, how to move around, how to model shapes and what most of the interface does etc) after that is just experimenting with the program, searching tutorials on how to do stuff that maybe you didnt even knew about and further developing your skills

[@TheGamersState]

The fact that I've been using Blender for over 2 years and am still learning plenty of new stuff proves how amazing of a program it is.

[@RoRo_1605]

For people who had problems applying this material to some objects, try in edit mode to select all the vertices and apply "flip normals" (when in edit mode, press alt N) selecting "flip". Then adjust the thickness in the modifier. Maybe that's how it works.

[@magaliiida]

OH MY GOD THANK YOU!!!!

[@RaichuWizDom]

Additional tip: if you want to add more of a sketchy look to the outline, you can paint different weights for vertices and input that into the Vertex Group. For example, this can prevent you from having a black outline around the whites of the eyes in side-view. It can also be used to vary the thickness, so you'd have a thicker line around, say, a bulging bicep or a rounded belly. Main limitation is that your stroke shape would look like it broadens outward *from* the model, getting it to look like it broadens inward *towards* the model. To check the difference: see any tutorial on fills and strokes for My Little Pony vectoring. You can see around the legs that the stroke edge touches and covers part of the fill: the curve from the top point of a stroke goes inward, as opposed to flowing out of it. There's probably better examples, but MLP's fandom was pretty prolific in the day, and that example is the easiest to compare. Anyway, getting that look may require fiddling with the outline material colour, or making a separate shape of it in the same way you can model clothes. Remember, the outline material is a material like any other, it can take a texture in and of itself. If you're not doing it for a game, consider using different colours for the outline, it can make a huge difference. Allegedly, at least, haven't gotten to exploring that bit in full myself. Anyway, if you want to go from 3D anime cook to chef, the vertex weights and texturing the outline are a good place to start.

[@9Kyushi]

that's why i love this channel dude others channels make a movie to explain all that is possible and this chad just say what you want know in seconds

[@RoshaFR]

what I found useful to know about the material offset is: if you have 2 materials applied to your modal, you insert the contour material right below each material and material offset = 1 will search for the „next“ material in the stack. Therefor material offset = 0 will not search for the First material in the whole stack but will reference „itself“ (guess thats why its called „Offset“)

[@TopsDlen]

You just make 1 person happier. Thanks!

[@gomezrodriguez9059]

... Oh no. Three years ago, I made a complicated freestyle system that suited me anyway. REALLY thanks for being able to re-render everything again. Good work. :-D

[@simonlu5141]

So fast fast fast and no nonsense! this is the best!

[@StickFreeks]

THANK YOU! I have many times looked for a simple video covering line art materials and have never found one as simple and concise as yours.

[@flyhyland]

I hope you have a faaaantastic day too, Royal Skies!

[@robfrydryck127]

342 likes and zero thumbs down. You're the man.

[@lostcrusader8053]

I look forward seeing you explain how to control the lighting on character. Some Blender users have shown it but their explanation isn't clear and straight to the point like yours.

[@IchigoFurryModder]

Probably shoulda mentioned, this method only works if backface culling is enabled for the material, or if using Cycles, you can set the transparency to the backface output of a geometry node. I really wanna point out, this method can look kinda ugly in some spots of a mesh deformed with bones and non-binary weights like a character, in my experience at least, couldn't find a good way to fix it. The timing of this is really funny to me, but anyway, if you wanna do offline rendering in Blender, I think it's worth going over the other methods, or more specifically, the new line art modifier. I wouldn't go for Freestyle now with the line art modifier, it was made over a decade ago, designed for little geometry, it runs only on a single CPU thread, and it's optimized for machines as old as itself, so it can take an excruciatingly long time to render, it gives good results but with a better option out its just not worth it. The line art modifier by contrast, it lets you select a collection or object, and from that and the camera's frostum, it builds line art, as the name suggests, of that object, in the grease pencil the modifier is in. Rendering this just as is can take several times longer than rendering with Freestyle, but that's only if you don't bake it, if you bake it, its gonna take several times *less* to render than Freestyle. I haven't messed much with it but it's really cool, of course you can't port it to another engine, well you can but you'd need to program it yourself and optimize it a bunch for real time, but if you're only gonna do renders or animations, or even if you're gonna render promotional art or something for a game, I think it's easily the best option, I got it working with pretty dang decent results and I barely did any setup so I think it's really really worth looking into.

[@Dr.Fluffles]

Works really well with changed colors plus the blur and wave modifiers, too, for interesting effects, like a hologram.

[@overrev982]

(Im a beginner) but im facing some major issues with the greace pencil stroke lineart method. 1. If I add the thing, it lags my scene immensely to the point where even selecting something will make blender stop responding for maybe 30 seconds. And 2. If I even dare try to render an animation then it maxes out my ram and blender will just crash maybe a minute into the render. (My pc isnt bad, I have a gtx 3070 with a ryzen 7 3700x and 16gb ram. any help? I've been problem solving this for days. And also I dont know really anything at all about baking

[@ShutterlabCreative]

I'm new to Blender. This tutorial and your voice, outstanding. It's like I'm getting technical know how from a wise guy.

[@frustratedsquirrel]

Waiting with bated breath for the topology tutorial, after taking a peek at the guilty gear models and trying to figure out just why their flow is so funky.

[@darkflamesquirrel]

We all are c:

[@kit-ro]

i havent checked out the newest one, but for their first 3d one they revealed their method at GDC. They aligned sections of flat colour to a kind of palette atlas and pull parts of the UV out to make internal lines. They also used vertex colours for shadow bias. So their topology was made with these factors in mind. kzbin.info/www/bejne/r5mqm3awra-Jaac

[@omark2776]

THANK YOU CONCISE TUTORIAL MAKERS ARE GOD SENT GIFT!!

[@mnrltown2406]

damn, really need this

[@rezpiral]

I followed the instructions and currently material offset is set to 1, but right now it has the appearance of black mesh sticking out of my character in random places. It's especially apparent at the finger tips. Any thoughts on what might be wrong or if there's something else I need to be doing for my model to make this work properly?

[@kunyoruyo]

Hey! Idk if you still have this issue but for anyone else looking for an answer: I tried to use the material on a humanoid mesh with an already existing base and the same issue happened, either that ot thewhole thing would look black. So I removed all of the materials, added the Solidy modifier first THEN added the base material from this video (kzbin.info/www/bejne/sHqWd6KuedV7Y80) and finally added the outline material. Maybe the material queue got jumbled up, idk. If anyone else has another solution please fell free to reply to this reply

[@Radiocactive_garlic]

I knew this one ! But now whenever I need it, it takes me less than 60 seconds ?! Nice !

[@Gatz3D]

Super useful! This outdoes Freestyle by a long shot. :D

[@wailfulcrab]

The only downside is you cannot customize the "stroke" and since you technically duplicate the mesh, it might impact the render times in some crazy scenes with a lot of objects.

[@rohitaug]

I have an idea I want to share. For it to work, you need to have edges where you want outlines to be. Then create a second UV map where you mark outlines as seams in edges. Then in a shader, use a sobel operation on both the second channel UV data and the scene depth. This will create outlines on both the silhouette and seams.

[@rohitaug]

Using the filter node: docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/compositing/types/filter/filter_node.html EDIT: For Unity, watch this: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iH7XZ3eZlrKrmac

[@seraph8293]

you are a legend so simple to understand and to the point

[@sadfaceu373mrsad3]

thank you so much this has really improved my models

[@neubeginner4636]

Damn, that was fast and informative.. thank you 😁

[@ショコボン]

Geez, bro, you are sooooo on time! Megathanks!!!

[@hoanglinhle4468]

Freestyle is a good option too. You can control the shape and thickness of the line

[@TheJackiMonster]

You can even use nodes to match it your needs.

[@bertfromseasamestreet]

Thank you! You made it so much clearer than the already pretty good tutorial I was following!

[@JamalBakari]

Dude, you are crazy awesome with these videos! Come to the UE4/UE5 side!

[@ProxyDoug]

You can also just insert an RGB node into the material Outpuit. Found out about this a few weeks ago and felt kinda silly that I didn't knew of it earlier.

[@Nkanyiso_K]

I spent quite a bit of time doing 2D (comics work mostly) so I guess it's about time to rewatch your playlist since I'm a bit rusty

[@detective7852]

lets gooo teach us teacher

[@Animadvertens]

I don't even do -or like- npr and anime shading, but I had to like this vid!

[@Ikxi]

Ohh I finally understood how to do this one! Always was confusee what does what, but now I got it xD

[@JonahHache]

you're kickass... binging your vids right now haha

[@kartixsyn]

blender: your imagination is infinite power! use me

[@v.m.g.7446]

holy shit, also thanks but you were litterally the husain bolt of blender tutors.

[@MagmaSpacer]

Do you know how if it’s possible to do certain anime effects in 3D like impact frames or the sort of anime key frame look?

[@MinthZe]

That would be awesome

[@M4rt1nX]

Check out Pierrick Picaut, he might have what you are looking for. His last video is amazing.

[@Bezhodeft]

i have two method in mind - Draw your own impact frame either from specific rendered frame into black and white or draw it manually using severals lines , then import it as image planes then position it to fill the camera and only show it during that specific frame you want have impact frame with -Using the same impact frame you make but instead on putting it directly in 3D viewport , you use after effect to compose it so you have more control on the effect such as layer mode , blur and stuff

[@RaichuWizDom]

Marius Oberholster has some good resources on 3D anime effects, he might have something in his playlist that interests you.

[@nathanycwong]

pierrick picuat has some tutorials like this

[@allmightyloaf7134]

I cannot express how simply flawless every single video you make is at getting everything across as quickly as possible wasting no time.

[@Thesupperals]

I like how CG cookie now supports Blender to advertise on.

[@palingenesis]

you are a great man.

[@mechanee9444]

OMG I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR THIS, THANK YOU SOO MUCH'

[@McHaven07]

really can't get this to work. foes the size of the object have anything to do with it by any chance? or has there been an update maybe? i felt i followed the instructions extremely closely, but when i press the same buttons he does, the same things do not happen. halp. edit: it's the backface culling, for some reason; i select it, but the entire material stays black

[@Dr.Fluffles]

Btw I was having trouble getting this to work in Cycles, then got it to work by feeding the Emission shader into a mix shader with a transparent shader, and a factor of "Backfacing" from Geometry, followed by another mix shader with transparent again, and a factor of "Is Diffuse Ray" from Light Path.

[@Dr.Fluffles]

I initially tried with "Is Shadow Ray" based upon what another had said, but it didn't seem to make a difference in my example scene, but maybe it's also necessary in a more complex scene.

[@Crunchy_Punch]

@@Dr.Fluffles Tried "Is Diffuse Ray" first and that didn't fix up the dark shading. Connected up "Is Shadow Ray" instead and it worked beautifully. I was using a topology heavy model so that must be the difference.

[@setik1337]

beautiful. thank you

[@habeang304]

I use outline in cycles and I yes I know it's bad that's why I watch this video 😀

[@FlamingFoxProd]

The Inverted Hull method is a great way to make outlines, but it can be a bit annoying to get right. There's this great addon I know of called the Outline Helper, that does the entire process for you. kzbin.info/www/bejne/pKbGdqdshbKHgaM

[@Yukillion]

Damn I was just about to post the same link

[@daliyasilliesqxdsgd3494]

Thanks for sharing this, really!

[@primaryband6047]

I already have a solidifer on my object and messing with it messed up the object. Any advice?

[@NotASpyReally]

what the HECK ARE YOU SPYING ON US?? My brother wanted to make this he was researching shaders and stuff and you make this video!!! AMAZING THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

[@naatkeey]

I was just thinking about this technique earlier today lol

[@Amipotsophspond]

google always knows, no really google ALWAYS knows.

[@Marc_Fuchs_1985]

Oldest trick in the book, but since there are plenty users not knowing it yet and new ones add to the crowd every day, keep the base tuts coming! My only question is...... .....why the fuck 720p? It's enough for seeing what's going on, but why torture us?!?

[@ooiiooiiooii]

When you are doing a simple shader there is no reason to use nodes, just use the same window you clicked to add the new material. Its so much faster. Also, Blender does not start counting materials at 0, the slider is called Material Offset, that means you are moving down on the material list based on that number.

[@MeownaMeow]

my brain just exploded watching this video

[@japanforchrist450]

Thanks a ton man, God bless

[@limlipsoon6608]

awesome ~

[@abhijeetbhagat1165]

bro you have old blender there is new idea come with blender 2.9 option known as line art which use grease pencil to creat outomatic outline using camera view but other direction opposite of camera grease pencil was mesh up.

[@fo1711]

Oh yeah that part of KZbin (more than 90% of it)...tips and cool tricks 2 mins videos that never really work. But looks cool and super fast

[@darkmelon9192]

does it works with cycles? im trying but all I get is a completely black surface

[@RemyNote]

Nice, however did you find out about the Grease Pencil "Line Art Modifier" yet?

[@muhammadnaufal2077]

this is insane

[@Ratatted]

When in shader mode it turns black how do I fix it?

[@TheGooGaming]

Amazing!

[@FelicianoGC]

Just get to normal editing already! JK love your videos. You take your time c:

[@splatsmash5003]

Mr. Skies, will this line of tutorials end up explaining how to export a shader from blender into unity so it looks the same there?

[@IchigoFurryModder]

You can't do that, Blender uses nodes for shaders, and Unity uses actual HLSL, GLSL or ShaderLab code, the Shader Graph is just a wrapper for that, it just makes GLSL from your nodes, that are SOOOOOOO not compatible with Blender's, there's other more subtle problems but that's the main one.

[@oredi]

Isn't solidify a little heavy for game implementation? I love the effect, but a little afraid to incrase count there.

[@longvu1074]

I dunno what i did wrong, but my sphere wasnt cel shaded and the tutorial just turned my sphere compleatly black. :(

[@farianderson168]

Why didn't you post this just one or two years earlier ? 😄

[@BejorkDibut]

can you do this after an almost finished project? like aply to all at once as an overlay?

[@hebertdesouza1129]

Thanks, mate!

[@kenzietownsend6644]

I can't seem to figure out how to use this with objects created with geo nodes like Buildify or those plant addons. I've been looking around for a few days and it hasn't come up.

[@ElDonitazz]

I love you.

[@panmush]

You are a real one

[@Ze_N00B]

I still can't get it to work. Instead of being an outline, the material is not only a flat, default white, but also completely covers up the other meshes. I even gave in the proper material offset amount.

[@micmacha]

You know, I've been doing my darnedest to learn Krita and OpenToonz for stuff like this too. Krita is fantastic (FANTASTIC) for 2D stills, but its animation, while quite usable, leaves a lot of features to be desired... Toonz was used by both Miyazaki and Groening, and is likely to catch up to Blender someday because it mimics working in a classical animation studio; but it just hasn't yet. (_Yet_ .) These new grease pencil tools, combined with the natural flow of animation in Blender, put it so far ahead of the game. Add a few video planes and some proper compositing and you can theoretically use all three. (Yes, I am fundamentally an open-source supporter.)

[@AllaSweetGames]

Hi! I have an issue: when I move my camera farer from my model, outline material starts glitching through my model. How do I fix that?

[@MinthZe]

When I do this my object just glows solid black. Also it goes solid black as soon as I delete the principle shader

[@daliyasilliesqxdsgd3494]

When editing the outline material, go downwards to the settings options, and turn on the backface culling there. (It sets the backface culling on for the material, which is needed for it to draw properly) I kinda had the same issue until I thought of this, actually, and still have.

[@Reynardfoox]

how do you know how to bake Outlines texture?

[@ryanpressler4913]

No luck. Over and over again I fail. I'm sooooo frustrated as I've spent hours trying at least three very similar tutorials on KZbin, with no results. I even downloaded the OutlinerHelper Addon and that didn't work. I'm following ALL these tutorials frame by frame triple-checking that all my settings match what's happening in the tutorial, but I do not get outline results. What can I possibly be missing? By the way, I'm on Blender 2.93 and I'm starting each tutorial attempt with a new general blender file and not changing anything except for what these tutorials are telling me to change. I wan to cry! lol

[@overrev982]

Did you find anything that works? Grease pencil and freestyle seem to just crash my blender..

[@Zekium]

What do you think of the newly implemented Lineart Modifier for Grease pencil ?

[@luisvillafane7892]

In old versions of Blender this effect was done just by selecting a box, I don't understand why they removed it. In the case of making robots or characters with many pieces, this procedure can take you forever to put lines and the toon style effect is not an option.

[@foolsanticsstudio]

This works for me in Eevee but not Cycles. And in cycles it works in the material preview but in the render it colors everything in like backface culling isnt working or something. How can you make this in cycles?

[@davidlucakrell1574]

Does it work with subdivision Surface modifiers? Because it looks weird in my case

[@scale8125]

Should've mentioned this only work with EEVEE.

[@SalemFU]

is there any way to fix the fact that there are now lines through the middle of my eyes*? i love the effect, but obv. having these random marks looking like they are clipping through my eyelids is a no-go =/

[@drbunglenut]

bro really did it in 60 seconds 💀

[@ashiq00056]

Thank you very much !!!

[@basspig]

I followed this step by step, but I end up with the hair being all black. Can't get the outline effect. There's no white or grey area.

[@salazar84]

The good thing about this is that it does its job, the bad thing is that you get clipping issues here and there once in a while. Which is kinda frustrating most of the time.

[@paxxous]

thanks man

[@SpeshoFX]

How does this compare to Freestyle Lineset? Is this a better usage?

[@JackFrost931]

i Already Textured my Model beforhand, if i now add an Outline it Inverts the already set Colors in Texture paint mode but in Layout Mode it seems Fine, if i Export the Modle Later to Unity will the colors stay or will it be inverted?

[@Levendo]

Grease pencil method gives superior results imo, but this one isn't bad either.

[@benwilliams8252]

So when I do this I can only see the outlines if I go into my character and they look great. How do I make it so that the outlines apear on the outside of the character?

[@ronymello3449]

when I use another method, adding stroke the file is VERY slow, is it possible to fix this?

[@Trng-gk1db]

wow, that was easy

[@Wrenchy247]

What about Cycles?

[@Soggy32]

its not working out for me is it possible to do with if you color a mesh with vertex paint

[@smackmmk]

Parts of my model are not getting an outline, they are instead shrinking while the other half of my model is gaining an outline with this method how do I fix this?

[@trashofficialyt]

Problem: I'm using v3.5, I followed all the steps and nothing happened. Do you know how to fix the problem?