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Blender cell shading

Authors
  • avatar
    Name
    Rodney Zamora
    Twitter

Blender is a powerful and free open source 3D creation suite that supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation. And while it’s capable of producing photorealistic images and animations, it can just as easily be used for more stylized projects, like the one shown above.

One popular technique for achieving a specific look in Blender is called cell shading. Cell shading is a style of computer graphics that mimics the look of hand-drawn cartoons. It’s characterized by very limited colors and strong black outlines.

To achieve this look in Blender, you first need to create a black and white image called a height map. This height map will be used to create the outlines. To do this, you can use any 2D image editor, like GIMP or Photoshop.

Once you have your height map, open it in Blender and go to the Add > Mesh > Height Map menu. This will create a new mesh that’s based on your height map.

Now that you have your height map mesh, it’s time to give it some color. To do this, go to the Materials tab in the Properties window and add a new material. Set the material to use a diffuse shader and use a texture that’s based on your height map.

Now that you have your material set up, go to the Object tab in the Properties window and add a new modifier. Choose the Subsurf modifier and set it to use Catmull-Clark subdivision. This will smooth out your mesh and make it look more like a cartoon.

Finally, go to the Render tab in the Properties window and enable the Freestyle setting. This will give your render a black outline that’s based on your height map.

And that’s it! You now have a cartoonishly-styled render that’s based on a height map. You can experiment with different height maps, materials, and subdivision levels to get different results.

Q: How do you do cell shading in Blender?

A: There are a few different ways to do cell shading in Blender. One way is to use the Cycles render engine and use the principled BSDF shader with the toon setting enabled. Another way is to use the Blender Internal render engine and use the toon shader.

Q: How do you draw a shaded cell?

A: There are a few ways to do this. One way is to use the "fill" tool to color in the cell. Another way is to use a "gradient fill" which you can find in the "fill" tool menu.

Q: What is cel shaded?

A: Cel shading is a type of computer graphics that simulates the look of hand-drawn animation. Cel shading is often used to give video games and cartoons a unique visual style.

Q: Is cel-shading 2D or 3D?

A: Cel-shading is a 3D rendering technique used to give objects and characters a cartoon-like look.