Here I am again, super excited about releasing another asset for the Unity Asset Store! This one is a tiny little thing, but surprisingly took a long time to get polished enough to send out for general use. It's an awesome-looking outline effect shader that integrates nicely with the Post Processing Stack v2 as an extension effect.
I work really hard to make the assets I build as easy to use as possible. For example, in the Editor (while not even running the game) you can drag an object to the Post Liner Renderer component and see what the outlines would look like, and tweak everything to your liking, at your leisure.
I think it's also worth mentioning how many controls come with the Pro version. Although the Free version is really quite nice, it's just what it is. You can pick the color, and that's it. If you want to make it match your game style, the Pro version is definitely the way to go. For comparison:
Great, but what do all these extra controls do in the Pro version?
- The ability to set your own Fill Color, for starters. That gives you control over the blend-to color for visible pixels of the highlight object. It lets you bright up the brightness or change the color of the object you see. You also get a Outline Color that affects visible pixels that form the edges of the object.
- The Fill Color Hidden is similar, but only affects obscured pixels, which lets you do a kind of x-ray effect. You also get Outline Color Hidden, which lets you pick the color of just the obscured pixels, in case you want to do a Super Mario Galaxy like effect, or for objects in a high density scene where things get lost easily.
- The Topology controls are mostly about the exterior line weight of an object.
- The Hard Edge controls are primarily the interior lines of an object, which sometimes help make it more obvious it's being highlighted.
- Line Thickness is pretty much what it sounds like.
- Error Tolerance and Topology Sensitivity give you control over how sensitive the shader is to depth and normals that produce bright pixels, in case it's too harsh or shimmers based on your Near/Far plane distances. (There are math precision issues when you set them too far apart, in general, not just with this shader.)
- The various Blend values let you decide how much each effect mixes into the final pixel color.
- Finally, the various Depth Fading values let you dial in exactly where between the Near and Far plane each effect fades out, to prevent distance shimmer.
Overall, there's a whole ton of control here, and as far as I can tell, one of the few outline shaders written that integrates perfectly with the Post Effects Stack v2.
What about HDRP, LWRP, Universal RP?
I have to be honest, I am mostly working on older Default rendering pipeline projects. From what I have read, HDRP should work fine if you get the Post Processing Stack v2 running. Also from what I've read, LWRP and Universal RP are really about the same thing, and URP doesn't support the PPSv2. Older LWRP might. I haven't tried it out. Let me know if you do, I'd really appreciate it.
How about some documentation?
I thought you'd never ask. The PDF file is already in the Unity Package that you can get from the Asset Store, but if you want to grab the latest version, it's right here.
Got any videos?
Not. Yet. I have a voice for silent movies.
Any cat pics?
