Developer tantaneity shared how they recreated a painterly shader they saw done in Blender, but this time using Unity URP.
The effect runs as two fullscreen post-process passes on top of whatever is in the scene. That way, no material changes are needed.
The effect runs as two fullscreen post-process passes on top of whatever is in the scene. That way, no material changes are needed.
The effect is built around two passes, and the first one is the main one. For each pixel, the shader finds its position in the 3D world using the depth buffer, then uses a Voronoi to divide the screen into cells and find the two nearest cell centers.
It then samples the color from the cell center and projects it back to the screen, so all pixels inside a cell share roughly the same color sample.
This is what creates the patch look.
// Original shader code shared by creator
centreWS = centreWS - dot(centreWS - P, N) * N;
float4 cs = mul(UNITY_MATRIX_VP, float4(centreWS, 1.0));
float2 cUV = (cs.xy / cs.w) * 0.5 + 0.5;
half3 c = SAMPLE_TEXTURE2D_X(_BlitTexture, sampler_LinearClamp, cUV).rgb;Each cell gets stretched along a random axis, making them look like elongated brushstrokes.
// Original shader code shared by creator
float3 axis = normalize(hAxis * 2.0 - 1.0);
float along = dot(d, axis);
float3 perp = d - axis * along;
along *= _PatchStretch;
perp *= rcp(_PatchStretch);
float dd = along * along + dot(perp, perp);The shader blends between the two nearest cells based on how close each pixel is to the border. Each cell gets a small random shift in value and tone, so adjacent patches don't look identical even when the underlying color is the same.
There is also an optional cel shading step that quantizes the luminance into bands.
// Original shader code shared by creator
float s = luma * _LightBands;
float qL = (floor(s) + smoothstep(0.0, _LightBandSoftness, frac(s))) / _LightBands;
patch *= qL / max(luma, 0.001);The second pass is for highlight strokes and edge detection. The strokes are placed in a 3D world-space grid, oriented along the light terminator (the edge where lit and unlit areas meet). Each stroke uses a cos squared width profile so it tapers at both ends.
Each stroke also gets a small random rotation, keeping them from all pointing the same direction.
Each stroke also gets a small random rotation, keeping them from all pointing the same direction.
// Original shader code shared by creator
float u = along / max(len, 1e-5);
float widthProfile = cos(u * HALF_PI);
widthProfile *= widthProfile;
float core = 1.0 - smoothstep(coreEdgeIn, wid * widthProfile, abs(across));For the edges, tantaneity runs a 4-tap Sobel on both the depth buffer and luminance, combining both signals to catch geometry and color edges.
A ring of 8 sample points around each pixel controls the line thickness, and smooth value noise drives the opacity so the outline gets thicker in some spots and almost fades out in others.
tantaneity mentioned that the main limitation is that patches are anchored in world space, so they slide on moving objects.
If you want to see more from Tantaneity, or check out the painterly shader, the links will be right below.
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