Stylized material nodes and ready-to-use masters for Unreal Engine 5.8: toon shading with its own shadow map, cel and blob shadows, comic print and film / video tape post processing, dissolve and hit flash, vertex animation texture (VAT) materials and a set of PBR material functions.
Free to use under the MIT License (see LICENSE).
Supported engine: 5.8 (the content is saved in 5.8 and can't be opened in older versions). Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux. Requires the engine plugins AnimToTexture (VAT functions) and BaseMaterial (M_Generic); both ship with the engine and are enabled with this plugin.
Right-click in any material graph and look under VRR. Each node is written in C++, so it compiles to the same HLSL everywhere and shows clear errors when an input is missing.
| Node | What it does |
|---|---|
| Vrr Toon Shading | Cel shading from one art-directed fake light (scene lights are ignored). Outputs Emissive for Unlit materials, with band count, rim, specular and metallic bands. |
| Vrr Toon Shadow | Cast shadows for toon materials, read from the Vrr Toon Shadow Caster's shadow map (1 = lit, 0 = shadow). |
| Vrr Blob Shadow | A cel-shaded blob shadow projected onto the ground under a character (used by M_Toon_BlobShadow). |
| Vrr Cel Shadow | Post process: a flat drop shadow behind meshes marked with the Vrr Cel Layer component. |
| Vrr Comic Shade | Post process: comic print shading with hatching and halftone dots (Highlights, Print or Lit Falloff dot styles). |
| Vrr Film Grain | Post process: soft, clumpy grain that changes 24 times a second. |
| Vrr Film Lens | Post process: chromatic aberration, channel shift and softness toward the edges. |
| Vrr Halation | Post process: the warm halo film gets around bright highlights. |
| Vrr Tape Grade / Tape Signal / Tape Warp | Post process: the color, signal flaws and picture wobble of a worn 1990s video tape. |
| Vrr Dissolve | Noise-driven dissolve with a glowing burn edge. |
| Vrr Hit Flash | An emissive flash that fades out after a hit. Gameplay only writes the hit time to a parameter. |
| Vrr Stepped Time | Time that advances in held steps, for animation "on twos" or "on threes". |
| Vrr UV Region | Picks one material region out of a packed "UV Layouts" channel (atlas or UDIM). |
Add these to your actors, or place them in the level:
- Vrr Toon Shadow Caster (actor): renders the depth map Vrr Toon Shadow reads, looking along the toon light set
in
MPC_ToonLighting. Place one per level that uses toon shadows. - Vrr Toon Boil (component) and Project Settings > VRR Toon Boil: the toon noise "boils" only while the camera or an object moves, like hand-drawn animation where held frames stay still.
- Vrr Blob Shadow (component): keeps a blob shadow under its owner, optionally following the feet.
- Vrr Cel Layer (component): marks its owner's meshes for the Vrr Cel Shadow post process. Needs Project Settings > Rendering > Custom Depth-Stencil Pass = Enabled with Stencil.
All content lives under Plugins > Material Library Content in the Content Browser.
Masters/Toon:M_Toon_Base,M_Toon_Floor,M_Toon_Outline(inverted hull),M_Toon_BlobShadow, the sharedMF_ToonLitfunction andMPC_ToonLighting(light direction and colors for every toon material).Masters:M_BasicColor,M_BasicColor_VAT,M_Generic(triplanar, macro variation),M_Glass.PostProcess:PPM_CelShadow(place at Scene Color Before DOF) andPPM_Film, with parameter functions for each effect.Functions/VAT_v2: vertex and bone VAT playback with up to 11 animation slots (ML_VATholds the parameters).Functions: PBR channel functions (base color, normal, roughness, metallic, AO), detail normals, tiling and material layers.
Questions and bug reports: GitHub issues.