WAIT, WHAT?

Sturdy is a unique, real-time, highly stylized procedural Blender painting shader that reacts with expressive colorful strokes to plain white lights.

Wild. Gestural. Not realistic at all. We are not in a Pixar movie anymore!

▶ WORKS SMOOTHLY WITH BLENDER 4.2! (AND ANY VERSION ABOVE 3.4 REALLY)

MAIN FEATURES

▶ WILD AND EXPRESSIVE, BUT TOTALLY CUSTOMIZABLE

Sturdy looks great out of the box on both simple and high detail meshes, but you remain in control. Adjust the complexity, the scale, the rotation and the crunchiness of your brushwork, and nudge color expression by painting with light, by using an accent color or by customizing each color of the main palette with the provided Sturdy+ node group.

▶ 100% PROCEDURAL

No UVs, no bitmap textures, no problem! Brush strokes in Sturdy will look slightly grunge by default, but you may add Brush Crunchiness and control Crunchiness Scale for incremental effect. Everything is procedural, meaning you`ll get great detail even when rendering at insanely high resolution.

▶ COLOR ME CUSTOMIZABLE

Sturdy is based on two main node groups for the Shader Editor, Sturdy and Sturdy+.

With the standard Sturdy node group you may control color expression by Painting with Light, by using an Accent Color and by balancing it with an Overlay Color, if necessary. That works great most of the time.

If you want to micromanage the shades of the underlying magic palette., you may use the Sturdy+ node group: all eleven color stops of it.

You'll find examples of use of both node groups within the provided Blender files.

▶ FAST AND LEAN

Being EEVEE only, Sturdy brings in great results in realtime.

Both the Youtube promo video and the paintings that illustrate this documentation were rendered with four samples only, while also using the faster EEVEE Viewport Rendering. Try cycling around that!

▶ DOCUMENTS, PLEASE

Yes, we have documented everything. Go and browse now the handbook for additional details and tips!

WHAT WILL YOU GET?

With your purchase you’ll be able to download three Blender files:

• sturdy-shader.blend
  The smallest file and the only one you’ll actually need, it contains the Sturdy and Sturdy+ sample materials (along with its related node groups), a customized World Shader with a flat background, a Sun Light and some Point Lights.
  

  

• sturdy-shader-character.blend
  In addition to the above, this file contains a small setup and animation, in order to illustrate how changing settings and moving lights will affect the final look of the shader. Starring: two versions of the Sturdy low-poly character, our mascot.
  Parts of the animation were used in the Sturdy Youtube promo.
  

  

• sturdy-theodoric.blend
  A sample animated cinematic setup to show you how Sturdy will look great even with a single mesh and a single Sun Light. This one features a decimated version of a gorgeous mesh courtesy (CC0) of Oliver Laric (@Threedscans on myminifactory.com): the statue of Theodoric the Great sculpted by Peter Vischer the Elder (based on an initial design by Albrecht Durer).
  Parts of the animation were used in the Sturdy Youtube promo.
  

  

LIMITATIONS

• Sturdy is EEVEE only, being compatible with Blender 3.4 and above

• You may use Sturdy for both personal and commercial work, but you're not free to redistribute it or resell it, even after modifying it. You know the basics, but do read the short License Agreement.

ALSO

• Have you watched the Sturdy Youtube promo? It explains a lot.

• Seriously, if you're mildly interested you should read the documentation,

• I'm @brabaro on twitter. Go say hi and look at the pictures.

A mangled Moka rendered with four samples