Production cel-shading. Zero engine fork.

A cel-shading plugin for Unreal Engine 5. Compatible with Lumen, shadow maps, volumetric fog and lights. Source included.

Get it on Fab Coming soon Read the docs
Demo

See it running.

Characters shown are Epic Games' Paragon assets (free on Fab) and are not included with the plugin.

Capabilities

What it does.

Volumetric lights and fog feeding into the cel-shaded output
Comic-inspired stippled band transitions
Color-aware outline tinting per surface color
Volume-driven smooth style blending across zones
Back-anchored rim light with Fresnel modulation
Features

The capability set.

Per-actor opt-in

Set CustomDepth Stencil Value on a mesh component. The cel-shading pass treats only that actor; everything else renders as standard PBR.

Non-Stencil Full-screen mode

Toggle bAffectWholeScreen to skip per-actor setup. Every visible pixel is cel-shaded. Useful for prototyping and fully-stylized projects.

Pipeline-aware

Lumen GI, shadow maps, exponential height fog, volumetric fog and volumetric lights all participate in the cel-shaded output. No GBuffer override.

Shading-model agnostic

DefaultLit, Subsurface, SubsurfaceProfile, Cloth, Hair, Eye, ClearCoat — every UE shading model works as-is. The pass gates pixels; it does not touch your materials.

Outline, rim & halftone

Adaptive Laplacian outline with optional Color-aware tinting. Directional rim light with Fresnel and sun-anchored mode. Manga-style halftone screentone overlay.

Volumes, tabs & presets

ACelshadingVolume with bounded or global reach + smooth spatial blending. Custom Details panel groups every override into five tabs — Cel · Outline & Rim · Pattern · Atmosphere · Stencil — with per-group Reset and one-click style reset. UCelshadingPreset DataAssets for reusable looks.

Predictable GPU cost

One compute dispatch per active stencil slot (1..255 — pay only for what you place). Empty slots cost zero, and the whole effect has its own Celshading row in stat gpu — budget it like any other post pass.

No engine fork

Standard plugin. Drops onto stock Unreal — no 100 GB custom engine repo to clone, re-fork or maintain. Auditable C++ and USF source included. No editor patching, no marketplace dependency chain.

What's in the box

Five included presets.

Comix preset — Western comic-book finish Comix
Black Shades preset — high-contrast hard cel Black Shades
Manga preset — sprite-anchored screentones Manga
Strokes preset — 45° hatching transitions Strokes
Anime preset — multi-band cel with sun-anchored rim Anime

Every preset is a UCelshadingPreset DataAsset. Fork it, layer it, or blend several together.

For project leads

No 100 GB engine fork. No hacks.

Production-grade cel-shading that runs on stock Unreal. Pay once at the plugin layer instead of carrying a 100 GB custom engine repo across the whole team.

WITH AN ENGINE FORK
  • ✕  Every artist clones a 100+ GB custom Unreal repo.
  • ✕  Re-fork & re-merge on every UE point release.
  • ✕  CI/CD pipelines must mirror the fork.
  • ✕  Source-locked talent — only your TAs can iterate.
  • ✕  Marketplace plugins drift out of sync.
  • ✕  Project locked to whichever UE version was forked.
WITH ULTIMATE CEL-SHADING PBR
  • ✓  Drop the plugin in — stock Unreal stays stock.
  • ✓  Engine upgrades are normal, not a project event.
  • ✓  Any UE-licensed dev can iterate the look.
  • ✓  Marketplace plugins keep working unchanged.
  • ✓  Editor, PIE and packaged builds — one look.
  • ✓  Auditable C++ and USF source, no obfuscation.

Pay the plugin license once · skip the team-wide fork burden · an engine upgrade becomes a plugin update, not a re-fork.

Get the plugin

Get it on Fab.

Get it on Fab Coming soon

Unreal Engine 5 · full C++ and shader source. Questions or studio & multi-seat licensing: aaanextgenfactory@gmail.com.