Outline effects in Blender using geometry nodes

[@pixunPL]

Important note! - This solution does not work in cycles. It is necessary to additionally create a suitable shader.

[@aaronvdw]

Thanks for pointing this out!

[@Cojora]

Nice tutorial! Usually with geo node tutorials in general I lose track and get confused with what the nodes do, but in this you explained everything nicely! 👍 Looking forward to future tutorials!

[@aaronvdw]

thanks a lot for the feedback, and hope to make some more!

[@cerealexperiments8189]

This is so good.

[@AbsurdShark]

Thank you for this tutorial. Now i can finally replace my greese pencil method, since this will be more flexible and of course faster.

[@angelos4496]

Hey, nice video, is there a way to make it so the outline offset follows the sunlight's rotation instead?

[@boulie22]

Thank you for this tutorial. This was exactly what I was looking for. It is really clear by explaining step by step why certain decisions are made. Also learned some new things with creating parameters and using group nodes. The cartoon outline style together with the animations can create some really interesting art. I liked and subscribed. Are you dutch btw? Im dutch too.

[@aaronvdw]

So glad to hear was what you were looking for! My ancestry is all Dutch but I am American.

[@rileyb3d]

Very cool effect. Subscribed!

[@gecogameryt5878]

using the same node group across multiple meshes and the thickness of the line is in relation to the sizes of the mesh, is there any way of making the thickness uniform across meshes?

[@penwrythe]

I like this, but I am curious if it is possible to use a similar setup to invert lineart color based on how dark the background is, without it being driven by light?

[@DianaProbst]

That was really cool, and taught me a lot. Thank you. Altars with doom-laden statues, here I come.

[@scobelverse]

Great tutorial. Keep it going!

[@aaronvdw]

thank you!

[@p0ssumgrapes5442]

Awesome tutorial! Is there a way to put this geometry node on a semi-transparent object? Maybe with a mask?

[@byAndreasEkberg]

Learned a lot from this : ) ! thanks!

[@iam.2022]

Great tutorial, thanks 👍👍👍

[@aaronvdw]

Thanks!

[@uRick101]

- very helpful tutorial - many thx!!

[@aaronvdw]

Glad you found it helpful!

[@lenar_timergaliev]

@@aaronvdw and what kind of material is black in the starting example? was the background just made dark? I mean, the color of the object and the background are the same, only the outline is visible, how did you do that?

[@denisalirezai4853]

Awesome tutorial!! Is there a way to use it on a certain part of the mesh. Like I would do with vertex groups in the solidify modifier to control which vertices are assigned and which not?

[@aaronvdw]

Thanks and I haven't tried it but I think you could use vertex groups in the geometry node tree setup to tell the mesh which vertices you want the set position offset to affect. That *should* do it.

[@delights-35]

Thanks for the information!!! Also, is it possible to make that outline just disappeares somewhere procedurally, so that it will be like dots and dash modifier in grease pencil?

[@aaronvdw]

No, it's not really possible because it is not a path. However, for the emission shader that gives the outline color, you could possibly use a mix shader to blend it with a transparent shader, using a texture to indicate where it should be mixed. But I haven't tried that.

[@SaturdayXIII]

I've always struggled with this double mesh outline technique. On some objects it works fine, on others it's as if it refuses to use the two materials. I've got 3 objects that I've applied your basic outline set up to and one works while the other two don't. Flipping normals just makes the whole mesh either outline or base material, and this is consistent if I ditch the nodes and just use modifiers. I'm not going to bother you for indepth troubleshooting, but I feel like I'm doing something simple wrong. Anything come to mind?

[@evesattler1570]

Would this also work within Cycles? Since the inverted hull method needs a bit of weird shader workaround in Cylces to be pulled off

[@aaronvdw]

Good question, my instinct is it wouldn't but I haven't actually tried. If you do, let us know how it turned out?

[@abibackground]

Thanks for the tutorial! I subbed :) One quesiton. Will this tutorial only work when applied diffuse BSDF? I tried many ways using principle BSDF but nothing worked...

[@aaronvdw]

The outline material works best when it's an emission because the outline itself is the backface, which won't work with most materials.

[@Seafairlynn]

A question, if I wanted to soften the generated outline (instead of being a solid line in the intro), how would I do that? Thank you in advance for the response. Alternatively, would it be possible to hide the outline BUT display its glow?

[@aaronvdw]

I don't think it's possible because the outline material needs to be emission. The glow really comes from blooming, which is a render setting. So if there's no emissive material, there's no blooming. You might be able to remove the outline and keep the bloom glow by some clever composting, though,.

[@dimitrilalushi4693]

Thanks for the tutorial, it is very helpful! Btw, a question: What can be done for having all those effects and animation but without the shadows effecting the outlines? I know, it may be something very easy but I have to ask because I am new to geonodes. : - )

[@aaronvdw]

Thanks and yes you can do that in fact that's easier. You can omit the delete geometry node and the whole part of the tree that feeds into it.

[@dimitrilalushi4693]

@@aaronvdw Thanks!

[@rauchu5861]

will this work with curves for hair?

[@aaronvdw]

Not sure, give it a try

[@georgetherat3345]

Q: does this method still double the face count like solidify ?

[@aaronvdw]

It does because you need separate geometry for these effects. However, if you really wanted to you could control subd from within GN and have a higher level for the base mesh, and a lower one for the outline to save you some geometry.

[@GarviHere]

Hi! I am trying to create this outline effect but for a collection not for a single object so I added a plain object as a place holder and added a geonodes modifier to this plain which will be the outline for the whole collection so I added the collection info node but the scale for offset is not working as the Normals are referenced from the plane object. How do I create outline for a whole collection using geometry nodes?

[@GarviHere]

Just tried a thing, I added 2 geometry nodes to the plain object, in the first one I just used a set position and then realize instance, and in the other one I followed your geometry nodes setup, and it works but don't know what problems I may face from this or if this unoptimized way of doing this...

[@aaronvdw]

@@GarviHere Yeah you need to realize the collection objects somehow so that geonodes sees it as one object. Try providing your collection info to the Geometry to Instance node.

[@psychsnail]

Is it possibly to prevent very specific parts of the mesh from having the outline appear there?

[@aaronvdw]

In the branch of the geometry nodes tree where the original mesh is duplicated, you would want to select vertices and then delete that geometry. That should do it. An alternative way might be to duplicate your mesh in the outliner and delete the geometry in the duplicated mesh where you don't want the outline. Then in the geometry nodes for the original mesh, reference your 2nd manually duplicated mesh by using the Object Info node instead of splitting it off the original geometry like I did in the video.

[@psychsnail]

@@aaronvdw thank you so much I will give this a try! please consider doing a video on this topic because I know that many others have wondered how to do the same thing yet there are no resources online how to do it

[@azizal157]

❤❤❤❤❤

[@Tombaysbot]

What i think about this: If it doesnt work in cycles, then it's a crutch, not a solution

[@aaronvdw]

To think of features exclusive to either Cycles or Eevee (and there are a lot of them) as a crutch is one way to think about it. But they're different engines. So it follows that they, like, do things differently.

[@Tombaysbot]

@@aaronvdw ok maybe i was kinda wrong in that matter, alright. But i didn't find any way (except for freestyle) to make the same thing happen in cycles.