The Toon Shader 2D: Sprites & Tilemaps

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WEBGL DEMO (same demo is included in the asset)

🎨 The Toon Shader 2D is your ultimate toolkit for crafting awesome cartoon-style materials for Sprites and TileMaps, fully compatible with URP 2D Lights!

Whether you're going for a bold, vibrant comic book vibe with cross-hatching, a smooth, soft animation look, or even a retro pop art style with halftones, this shader has got you covered. The best part? It’s designed for total artistic control, so you can craft any toon style you can dream up with just the “The Toon Shader 2D” shader.

For the 3D version, check out The Toon Shader 3D

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You get two ways to control the shading style:

• Cell-based Shading: This gives you a sharp, comic-book-style look with flat blocks of color. It adapts to the light direction, giving you that classic cartoon appearance. Plus, you have complete control over the core shadow color, the terminator width and smoothness, as well as the form shadow color, allowing you to fine-tune the shading to get exactly the look you want.
• Gradient-based Shading: Want more color versatility? The gradient-based approach allows you to use rich, multi-color gradients to create smooth, dynamic transitions between light and shadow. You can design gradients with a wide range of colors, adding depth and complexity while still responding to light directions for that true cartoon feel.

If you prefer a simple, flat look with no shading effects, just turn off Toon Shading. This will give you a solid color appearance without any shading alterations.

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💡 SPECULAR AND RIM LIGHTING

You can add specular highlights and rim lighting for extra gloss and dramatic outlines.

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🎨 TOON STYLING

Styling is all about giving you full control over how your toon materials look. Whether you go for bold (Cross-)Hatching or fun Halftones (Polka Dots), you can adjust everything from pattern density to stroke or dot size, edge smoothness, opacity, and more. Both styles also allow for randomization, letting you add natural variation, just like in real life, where lines and patterns aren’t always perfectly uniform.

It's fully compatible with URP 2D lights.

🖋️ Hatching

For Hatching, you have control over:

• Density of the strokes
• Stroke size and falloff
• Edge smoothness
• Opacity and falloff
• Color
• Draw space: UV space or screen space
• Coordinate system: Cartesian or polar
• Blending modes: Lerp, additive, subtractive, multiply

Hatching-Specific Options:

• Stroke direction: Control the angle of your hatches
• Number of hatching cells: Add more layers for a cross-hatched effect

🔵 Halftones

For Halftones, you can adjust:

• Density of the dots
• Dot size and falloff
• Edge smoothness
• Opacity and falloff
• Color
• Draw space: UV space or screen space
• Coordinate system: Cartesian or polar
• Blending modes: Lerp, additive, subtractive, multiply

Halftone-Specific Options:

• Dot roundness: Adjust the shape of your halftones
• Line offset: Fine-tune the spacing between halftone lines for precise control

🌟 Randomization for Both Styles

Both Hatching and Halftones allow you to introduce randomization to any of these settings—whether it’s stroke/dot size, opacity, or density. This adds a natural, real-world feel, making your lines or dots vary in thickness, smoothness, or placement, just like a hand-drawn effect. It’s perfect for adding that organic touch to your toon materials!

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📏 OUTLINES

Naturally, you can add outlines with ease! 🎨 Take full control over the color, and width, giving your toon assets that perfect comic book look.

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🚀 OPTIMIZATION

No need to worry about performance! Our one-click optimization solution 🚀 automatically generates the most efficient version of the shader based on your material settings, keeping everything fast and smooth.

▰▱▰▱▰▱▰▱▰💥ZAP!💥▰▱▰▱▰▱▰▱▰

💎 Supported Render Pipelines:

• URP 2D 2021, 2022, and Unity 6

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🎁 BONUSES

• Great demo scene
• Intuitive custom UIs with helpful info texts and warnings, in case you missed something.
• Temple Model included! (as Sprite)

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❌NOT INCLUDED:

• Complex Buildings and Models as shown in the demo videos.

Note that "The Toon Shader 2D" installs itself as a Package, and appears under your Packages folder, not under Assets.