This shader creates a stylized, hand-painted art style with organic, painterly edges that can dissolve/erode, mimicking traditional art techniques in real-time 3D.


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Main Features
Stylized Lighting

• Replaces smooth photorealistic lighting with stepped, gradient-based shading
  
• Uses artist-controlled gradient textures instead of physically accurate light calculations
  
• Creates that "cel-shaded" or "illustrated" look common in games like Genshin Impact or Borderlands
  

Painterly Edge Effects

• Fresnel detection finds the silhouette/edges of objects
  
• Brush stroke textures add hand-painted texture variation
  
• Triplanar mapping ensures consistent texture appearance from all angles (no UV stretching)
  
• Gives the impression that edges were painted with actual brush strokes
  

Rim Erosion/Dissolve

• Combines rim lighting with noise textures to create organic edge breakup
  
• Edges can fade to transparency in a painterly, artistic way
  
• Useful for dissolve effects, artistic transitions, or simulating paint wear/aging
  

    

Properties & Parameters

• Texture Maps: Albedo map, normal map
• Surface properties: Metallic, Smoothness
• Painterly effect: Custom gradient texture for lighting, guide texture for painterly brush effects
• Rim lighting: Color, power, and intensity for edge highlights
• Erosion effect: Scale, threshold, and softness for texture-based edge breakup
• Brush strokes: Parameters for painterly edge effects

UE5 Niagara VFX

References

Final VFX

Unity Shader & VFX 

See more in project CAVERN UNITY TOOLKIT

Blender Shader: 3D Pixal Stylized Rendering