Stylized / NPR HDRP - Examples/screenshots/videos?

I was wondering now that HDRP has been around a while, if anyone has any examples (screenshots, videos, etc) of some stylized or NPR assets in HDRP?

This could be 3d assets or shaders or anything, I am just trying to guage what is doable and is not and what makes sense and what doesnt for this pipeline.

In particular I am looking into toon rendering and styles like that seen on the game "sable", and wondering if this is doable on HDRP?

 

I don't think using the HDRP will aid in a cartoony/toon style game, since the HDRP is targeted for high fidelty/realism. You are probably better of using the standard or LWRP especialy if u are new.

although could use

https://github.com/togucchi/HDToon

 

It's not necessarily that you can't do NPR with HDRP - but I would pause and ask "why would I do this with HDRP?"

Is there a specific feature of HDRP you need? Would URP be a better fit?

 

We've been asking ourselves the same questions lately, played around with it and came to the conclusion that HDRP and stylized/lowpoly just doesn't really look/work good together - the realistic lighting of HDRP just doesn't really fit with these stylized models/materials.

 

OP demonstrates lack of understanding in the render pipeline, but can understand mistake.

 

The OP is right in asking for stylized examples. And you provided/delivered, @unit_dev123 ... thanks for that, appreciated.
Though I also think that the style of Sable is a rather questionable choice for HDRP. Better choices: anatomically stylized monsters/npcs/player characters, yet still relying on realistic skin and hair/fur shading for example. Or architecture never seen before...
Or some tron like scenes - dark, lots of emissive lighting...
So in essence I think most of the stylization in HDRP we will see in the near future will happen with the silhouette of assets and either vibrant or gloomy lighting (lots of postprocessing involved).

 

@GameDevCouple nothing prevents writing (or obtaining) post processing effects and shaders that would achieve such effects, I've written myself a few test HDRP post-effects that do outlines, dithering, various pixelation effects, colored fog and so on. I don't share the opinion that HDRP couldn't be used for non-photorealistic purposes. Similar opinions have been voiced time after time when some new "realistic" rendering technique etc. arrives... Granted, it's possible that a lot of "power" might go to waste (or be underutilized) if you would use HDRP for some really stylized game...

 

Is available on github to browse sir?

 

Mate, FYI I am a senior developer and technical artist. I am asking because HDRP generates a number of textures useful to the art style we want to make, which URP does not generate, not because I have some sort of fundamental misunderstanding of how the SRPs work. I have been writing custom SRPs for the last 6 months. I was simply interested in seeing actual examples from anyone who has tried, in case there is some sort of unforseen stumbling block people have come across further down the line when delving into this sort of research.

I wouldnt go around assuming everyone is new when I have been registered on this community for the last 7 years and you have been for less than a month.


I ended up doing some tests and found that HDRP is a good fit for my teams art style and shader stack. We will post some examples of our stylized tests in it later this week. Thanks for the answers everyone who contributed.

 

i apologise sir.

 

No need no offence taken I appreciate anyone who takes the time to answer my threads!

 

No problem i am working on text based game and looking for unity devs to collab if you are interested please contact me

 

On HDRP?

 

No sir in general, I have link in signature if you are interested in helping me.

 

Actually I found some toon shader, it's even works with multiplie lights, but only with script on character.
https://github.com/SnutiHQ/Toon-Shader

Problem is - it based on unlit node, but in HDRP unlit is not flat, but physic based too. And it not looks so good like in LWRP/URP.



As you can see character is too bright, it comes from sky light(and if we have true physic sky say 2000 lux - he is start glowing), and no way to fix it, only turn skylight to 0. As someone says here - HSRP is not for toon. But maybe someone find some tweaks.

 

Hello sir, I wonder if u still working on this.

I found solution here if u email me we can discuss implementation and i walk you through.

https://www.bruteforce-games.com/post/watercolor-shader-devblog-13

 

No as I said already I have already worked things out.

Also once again you are posting solutions to things you dont understand. I was talking about HDRP, what you have posted is an in-built pipeline shader. I know how to write in-built shaders I have been doing it for years. I also said above that I did a test and HDRP is suitable for my needs.

I very much doubt you could walk me through anything given you cant tell the difference between in-built and HDRP. Your new, its okay to be new, just stop trying to act like you are not because your hurting others efforts by posting outright incorrect solutions and positing them as correct solutions.

 

Hey did you ever figure out a workflow solution for this? I am very interested in achieving a stylized/cel shaded/toon type of look in hdrp, could you share what kind of shaders you decided to use and if any of them are on the asset store or otherwise? I have never written a custom shader so I prefer to buy if possible. Thanks!

 

@Hybris_Team you can implement this pretty much the same way as with built-in pipeline. I've done a few times (different variations) on HDRP. You could implement your posterization/toon-shading effect separate from your outline effect, as a custom post-processing effect, if you need them for the whole camera view. Although similar toon shading results could be also achieved with a shader, you don't necessarily need or want an image effect.

If you choose to use a shader for toon effect, you could easily adapt one of the many examples floating around the internet, and there's a few tutorials too. For outline (if you need one) I think an image effect might be a better choice. But that depends a a lot on what you are exactly trying to create. Then, again, you can adapt already existing outline effects, and the things you really need to figure out are the not so well documented HDRP customization features.

Here's one of my experiments I made sometime in 2019:
This was implemented as two separate custom HDRP post-processing effects. One was an outline effect (which uses zbuffer and normal map, as usually is done.) And the another component of this effect is a color quantization post processing effect which uses an arbitrary palettte with just a few colors.

But I think that shader approach (made with shader graph) would be most likely better and more easily controllable option.

 

Thanks for the detailed response and awesome example! I’ve been looking at using Flat Kit from the asset store which is a collection of shaders and outline post processing effect. Do you think using something like this with HDRP would require me to edit the shader code for something like Flat Kit or RealToon available on the asset store? I dont know enough about the differences in the HDRP rendering vs URP which Flat Kit is designed for to know if it will work with HDRP, do you have an opinion on that?

 

Try searching Github for "hdrp toon". There are a few promising looking repos there.

 

@Hybris_Team I don't know about those specific effects, but when you have something that works, like old image effect or post-processing stack v2 effect, you could refactor/rebuild them to work with HDRP.

I suggest you start looking into HDRP customization docs, here:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/c...efinition@7.1/manual/Custom-Post-Process.html

When you got a basic post-processing effect running, then it's "only" matter of figuring out how to put the existing thing to a new form.

 

Thank you for the responses I’m going to look into both of those suggestions!

 

Hi there! I am one of the weirdos using HDRP for my stylized project.

I started with built-in and then moved to LWRP, but (maybe it was a coincidence), there was always something missing and found HDRP a perfect match.

I really do not regret using HDRP. It was a very different approach from the beginning and I was aware I could maybe achive similar visuals with another pipeline, but I really feel comfortable here to have all the techs I could need.

For the record, this game is a one-man power project at the moment and, if released, it will surely need external investment and a bigger team. Until then, I am pretty sure Nintendo (in case I would aim for their systems, as this is a PC game) would launch another console perfectly compatible with HDRP (look at the new nvidia ampere cards... my god...)

Anyway, as I am obsessed with optimization too, I can say I get a very good performance with systems from 2013 (pc) in 1080p (+60 fps) using Nvidia kepler / maxwell architecture. This is a perfect hit for me, as I am in the middle of an mvp with a much bigger beast as the main rig.

I hope this helps if someone is having some doubts... Keep in mind Unreal is like a HDRP beast and hey, Fortnite exists. I think HDRP and URP will be unified at some point, in a weird way maybe... I do not know.









This one (bottom) is the latest I published... I was testing a cel-shading shader for this character. It was fun to test, and I really liked the effect.

 

How did you get your game to look like that in HDRP? This is pretty much what I want my game to look like and I'm having so much trouble getting that look.

I love stylized games, cartoony looks with nice textures. I've been learning Unity for a year now and this is one of the biggest struggles I've had.

I've been thinking about switching to the URP to get better Stylized looks but if I could get close to what you have here I'd be happy sticking with HDRP.

I'm also a single dev just creating my first game and getting this look is proving harder than I thought.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thank You.

 

Hello there,

It is a mix of an specific art pipeline I have (75%) + post effects and sky tweaks (including diffusion profiles) on Unity (25%). I do not use any kind of light mapping though as in this game the player modifies the scene on runtime. I only use one global reflection probe (for this scene, at least), and no light probes at all.

HDRP has a beautiful render engine. You really just need to adapt your pipeline (from an art direction point of view) and let the render do the rest.

This is the overall idea. Hope it helps.

EDIT: About the shaders: everything is HDRP/Lit default shader except for the nature stuff (grass, leaves), and characters.

 

What a beautiful visuals. Very inspiring. Thanks for posting them.

 

This is perfect Glad to see HDRP works for this style! I am about to purchase the Procedural worlds setup and I think I can accomplish what I'm going for based on seeing your screenshots. HDRP has kicked my A** so far but I really love it. Once you go HDRP you cant go back

 

One key flaw with HDRP is that you can't use custom lighting. Any form of shadow attenuation control that does not rely on post processing is a no-go and Unity doesn't seem to care enough to fix this.

 

What shader did you use for the characters? And what about grass and trees?