Video summary

How To Use Toon Shading New In UE5.8 - Unreal Engine 5.8 Materials Tutorial

Main summary

Key takeaways

Technology

Tutorial overview: Toon / “Tune” Shading in Unreal Engine 5.8 (UE5.8 Materials)

  • The tutorial demonstrates how to create stylized toon shading in Unreal Engine 5.8 using a new built-in “Tune” shading model.
  • The Tune shader is:
    • engine-integrated (not a custom shader post-process)
    • customizable via a Tune Profile setup
    • not a post-process material, meaning it must be applied per material/object rather than affecting the whole scene globally.
  • Core goal: clean, fully dynamic, stylized lighting that still responds naturally to the environment.

In other words: you get toon banding behavior while keeping UE’s real-time lighting responsiveness.

Key capabilities and behavior

Lighting band control via a custom ramp

  • The shader uses a custom “tune profile”, particularly the diffuse ramp, to control:
    • where shading bands begin
    • band softness/contrast

Band breakup / stylized detail

  • Bands can be broken up using an offset texture (e.g., noise) for a more painterly feel.
  • The tutorial also explores possibilities such as:
    • halftone
    • cross-hatch–style effects (by experimenting with textures)

Automatic response to dynamic lighting

The toon shading model reacts automatically to:

  • colored lights (including point lights)
  • dynamic shadows
  • lighting changes like day/night behavior and Lumen response

Material setup steps (what the tutorial does)

  1. Create folders in the Content Browser:
    • Materials → Tune → create a new material M_Tune
  2. Use Substrate:
    • At the bottom, connect/use Substrate Tune BSDF (where “Tune shader happens”).
  3. Promote key PBR inputs to parameters for easier Material Instance tuning:
    • Base Color (default set to 0.5 gray for testing)
    • Metallic (default 0)
    • Specular (default 0.5; typically recommended not to change)
    • Roughness (default 0.5, later adjusted)

Recommended parameter guidance (practical tuning notes)

Metallic

  • Avoid going to 1.0 in many cases.
  • Suggested middle ground: 0.8–0.9.
  • For some texture sets, metallic = 1 can look “too realistic” and break the style (the tutorial later adjusts to ~0.3 as an example).

Roughness sensitivity

  • Roughness strongly impacts reflections.
  • If metallic is high and roughness is too low, results can become too realistic.
  • Example lower bound suggested: ~0.35–0.4 (depends on the desired look).

Specular

  • Usually left at 0.5.
  • Optional approach:
    • set to 0 if you want to remove highlights
    • or “lock it” in the graph

Tune Profile authoring (the banding system)

  • Create a Tune Profile asset via the Tune Profile dropdown and save it in the tune materials folder.
  • The most important control is:

Diffuse Ramp

  • The default ramp is described as already “really nice.”
  • The tutorial shows modifying it for:
    • a two-band / sharper cel look (deleting intermediate keys and aligning black/white near ~0.5)
    • a softer falloff look (reshaping the ramp)
  • There is a Reset option to recover defaults if ramp edits go wrong.

Diffuse ramp offset texture (adds painterly/crosshatch variation)

  • A diffuse ramp offset texture distorts/breaks up bands.
  • Examples shown:
    • Noise texture (increasing strength increases visible band breakup)
    • a Sphere render mask to simulate halftone-like/patterned shading
  • Key experiment knobs:
    • texture choice
    • scale
    • strength
    • possible inversion for better results

Specular ramp + shadow + GI controls (Tune Profile details)

Specular Ramp

  • Can be left alone for smoother specular.
  • Optional: use noise to distort specular falloff (example strength ~0.1).

Shadow extinction

  • Mostly left at default (example value: 10).
  • Controls how/where shadows fade.

Global illumination (Lumen integration)

  • Set up so toon shading works with Lumen.
  • Diffuse indirect scale:
    • 1 → reacts to Lumen indirect lighting
    • 0 → reduces/changes indirect influence, but may cause artifacts (e.g., streaks/falloffs)
  • Diffuse ramp includes shadow:
    • when enabled, you get proper banding inside shadows
    • the tutorial prefers this ON
  • Specular indirect scale:
    • example issue: unwanted glow/brightness on striations
    • setting to 0 removes glow (the tutorial temporarily adjusts diffuse indirect scale to maintain the desired look)

Texturing workflow (mapping character textures to Tune shading)

  • Uses a PBR texture set approach:
    • Base color (diffuse) texture
    • Normal map
    • MRA texture (packed metallic/roughness/AO channels; channel order may differ by asset)
  • Example packing assumption (tutorial’s character):
    • Metallic = Red
    • Roughness = Green
    • (AO also packed, but may be ignored)
  • Graph usage:
    • multiply operations combine diffuse/base color with texture-derived channels
  • Ambient Occlusion:
    • intentionally not used for the toon look (it adds gradients/fades that may undermine the style)

Normal strength control

  • Uses a FlattenNormal node with a parameter (default 0):
    • 0 = no change
    • negative values can increase perceived normal strength

Handling multiple material slots / texture sets (example: Quinn A/B)

  • The character/mannequin uses multiple material slots.
  • The tutorial initially applies one set and notices mismatches on some body parts (due to different texture sets).

Solution:

  1. Create a Material Instance (child) for the second slot (“Quinn B”) from the first (“Quinn A”).
  2. Convert textures to parameters (diffuse/base color, MRA, normal), so the instance can swap them.
  3. For “B”, assign the second texture set for the missing body regions.

Environment / lighting tests shown

  • Changing sun/sky position shifts toon bands:
    • lower light → warmer tone due to sky atmosphere colors (e.g., “golden hour look”)
  • Nighttime test:
    • works as expected depending on the scene’s lighting setup
    • “no light = no effect”
  • Point light test:
    • a point light produces toon bands immediately
    • changing point light color correctly tints the character
    • multiple lights can be used simultaneously
    • highlighted as an advantage over many “custom toon shaders”

Substrate extra features demonstrated

1) Emissive (and Lumen compatibility)

  • No emissive texture exists on the character, so the tutorial repurposes the MRA channels.
  • Emissive is built by using an inversion style operation like:
    • 1 - (texture channel) to invert the pattern so only certain thin lines glow.
  • Emissive works:
    • during day/night
    • visible at night
    • with Lumen

2) Pattern UVs control

  • Default behavior:
    • uses mesh UVs to wrap the diffuse ramp offset texture.
  • Alternate coordinate options:
    • World position:
      • pattern stretches in certain directions
      • can appear “anchored” oddly as the character moves
    • Triplanar mapping (shown as a UE 5.7 method):
      • uses a coordinate basis including pre-skinned mesh position so the pattern stays consistent on skinned meshes
      • recommended value: 3 (“pre-skinned”) for animated/skinned characters

3) Anisotropy (specular highlight shape)

  • Promoted to a parameter (adds extra cost).
  • Effect overview:
    • 0 = round highlight
    • positive = stretched horizontally
    • negative = stretched vertically
  • Suggestion: avoid unless needed; remove the parameter if not experimenting.

Main sources / speakers

  • Velocity (host/tutorial speaker) — Pitchfork Academy
  • Patreon/community references mentioned:
    • Velocities Vault
    • Misozo’s Patreon
    • Pitchfork Academy public Discord

Original video