Fully Light-Driven Toon Shader

ParaNormal Toon Shader is a procedural normal parallelization shader, an innovative NPR shading solution that allows a fully light-driven workflow and full compatibility with both EEVEE and Cycles, including GPU rendering.

Full support for the real lighting in your scene eliminates manual adjustments to materials, making it a breeze to achieve stunning toon rendering with subtle gradients, detailed shadows, and dramatic lighting.

Make your toon renders stand out like never before with a unique look inspired by digitally colored comic books and anime, while using the standard Blender workflow you already know.

Features Overview

• Supports light intensity & falloff, light color, indirect lighting, and shadows from any light source.
• Shader settings including diffuse, specular, metal, emission, and opacity can create nearly any toon material.
• Includes multiple shader variants plus modular nodes to customize the shaders or build your own.
• Customize the look with adjustable soft shading and procedural halftones.
  
• Uses the standard Blender lighting workflow you already know.
• Integrates with the Asset Library.
• Compatible with both EEVEE and Cycles, including GPU rendering.

🆕 Updates

v0.6.0 – Reflections & other improvements!

• NEW: Add Reflection node. Easily add real reflections, ideal for ballroom floors, mirrors, water, etc.
• NEW: Polar Coordinates node. Create circular patterns and kaleidoscopic effects.
• Numerous minor improvements, including more control over shadow intensity. (details)
  

v0.5.0 – Soft shading, Blender 4 support, and more! (details)
v0.4.0 – The Ink Update: Halftones, outlines, and a ton of other new nodes & enhancements! (details)
v0.3.0 – New utility node & several minor improvements. (details)
v0.2.0 – First update released: New shader, new materials, and more! (details)
v0.1.0 – Initial release!

📦 What’s in the Box?

• 8 total shaders: ParaNormal Curve Shader, ParaNormal Flat Shader, ParaNormal Triplanar Shader, and ParaNormal Uber Shader, plus utility & reference shaders including Basic RGB Toon Shader, Separate Worlds Shader, Unlit Shader, and Vector Visualization Shader.
• 7 materials: Base Matte, Base Semi-Gloss, Base Gloss, Base Metal, Base Glass, ParaNOIRmal, and Line Art (Inverted Hull).
• 37 modular shader node groups for customization or building your own shader variants.
• 27 reference scenes demonstrating various features.
• 1 complete, in-depth User Guide.
• Future updates are included for free.

Compatibility: Works perfectly in Cycles for Blender 3.6 and up, and EEVEE for Blender 3.6-4.1. Rendering with EEVEE "Next" on Blender 4.2 and up works, but requires denoising with a separate post-processing tool for the best results.

Meshes (and any other assets not listed above) shown in promotional images are intended for example purposes only, and are not included. Assets from promotional images are used here either with the permission of the artists, or in compliance with the Creative Commons Attribution license. Line art in promotional images uses either the Line Art modifier or inverted hull technique.