Toonwright: Toon Shading for URP & Built-in | Outlines, Water, Sky, 9 Presets

Toon shading for Unity 6.6 in URP and Built-in: cel lighting, nine one-click presets, ink outlines, halftone and hatching, toon water and a procedural sky.

Key features

• Toonwright/Toon: two-tone, banded (1 to 8) or ramp-texture shading, deep shade, shade mask
• 9 style presets: Classic Cel, Anime, Soft Toon, Flat Bands, Comic Halftone, Ink Hatching, Glossy Toy, Painterly, Silhouette Ink
• Halftone and pen-hatching shade patterns, anchored to the object
• Toon and anisotropic strand highlights, rim light, matcap, emission with scroll and pulse
• Wind sway, dissolve with glowing edge, camera-proximity fade, four transparent blend modes
• Hull outlines (in URP their own Render Graph pass, safe with depth priming); pixel or world width, distance fade, width maps
• One-click smoothed-normal bake for unbroken outlines on low-poly and skinned models
• Optional screen-space edge outline (URP renderer feature with a Volume override, or a Built-in camera component)
• Toonwright/Water: depth bands, shore, crest and line foam, glint, refraction, vertex waves
• Toonwright/Sky: gradient sky, sun that follows your light, toon clouds, stars
• Built-in pipeline and URP Forward, Forward+, Deferred and Deferred+; SRP Batcher compatible in URP
• One-click project setup, material converter, gradient ramp baker, 3 demo scenes

Technical details

• Requirements: Unity 6.6 (6000.6) or newer; Universal Render Pipeline 17.6 or newer, or the Built-in Render Pipeline
• Rendering paths: Built-in (forward, with additional per-pixel lights); URP Forward, Forward+, Deferred, Deferred+ (Toonwright/Toon renders forward-only)
• Shaders: Toonwright/Toon, Toonwright/Water, Toonwright/Sky, each with a URP and a Built-in SubShader, plus hidden screen-outline shaders
• Toonwright/Toon passes: URP: forward lit, hull outline, shadow caster, depth, depth-normals, motion vectors, lightmap meta. Built-in: forward base and add, hull outline, shadow caster, lightmap meta
• Outlines: URP: Toonwright renderer feature (hull outline pass, optional screen-space edge outline, Volume override Toonwright > Screen Outline). Built-in: outline pass in the shader, Toonwright Screen Outline (Built-in) camera component
• Presets: 9, applied from the inspector or from code (ToonwrightPresets.Apply)
• Editor tools: Project setup, material converter, smoothed-normal baker (UV channel 3), gradient ramp baker
• Runtime scripts: ToonwrightRendererFeature (URP), ToonwrightScreenOutlineBuiltin and ToonwrightDepthTexture (Built-in), ToonwrightWind, ToonwrightMaterial (keyword sync), ToonwrightPresets, ToonwrightSmoothNormals; Toonwright.Runtime and Toonwright.Editor assemblies
• Demo: 3 scenes; wolf, horse and cowboy models with palette textures and ready prefabs
• Batching: SRP Batcher compatible in URP (checked in the editor for all three shaders); GPU instancing
• Custom shaders: 5 (Toonwright/Toon, Toonwright/Water, Toonwright/Sky and two hidden screen-outline shaders), written in HLSL
• Effects included: toon lighting, hull and screen-space outlines, halftone, hatching, rim, toon and strand highlights, matcap, emission, wind, dissolve, camera fade, toon water, procedural sky
• Texture sizes: no textures are required; demo palettes 128 x 128, chrome matcap 256 x 256, sample ramp 256 x 4
• Documentation: README in Toonwright/Documentation
• Not supported: HDRP, Unity versions before 6.6. In the Built-in pipeline: no decals, light layers or motion vectors, and water takes only the main light

Toonwright gives Unity projects a complete toon look: cel lighting, ink outlines, comic halftone and pen hatching, toon water and a procedural sky. It works in the Universal Render Pipeline and the Built-in pipeline, and the same material renders the same in both. The URP side is written for Unity 6 and Render Graph from the ground up.

Nine looks in one click. Choose Classic Cel, Anime, Soft Toon, Flat Bands, Comic Halftone, Ink Hatching, Glossy Toy, Painterly or Silhouette Ink from the top of the material inspector, then adjust anything. Presets change shading, outline, rim and highlights only, so your textures and colours stay as they are.

Every toon feature in one material. Toonwright/Toon has two-tone or banded shading (1 to 8 bands) or a ramp texture you can bake from a gradient in the inspector, a deep shade for a second shadow tone, and a shade mask for painting where shadows always fall. On top of that: halftone dots or pen hatching in the shade transition, toon highlights and anisotropic strand highlights for hair, rim light that follows the light side or the shadow side, matcap, emission with UV scroll and pulse, wind sway, dissolve with a glowing edge, and a dithered fade as the camera gets close. Opaque, alpha clip and four transparent blend modes are included.

Outlines that stay put. In URP, hull outlines are drawn by the Toonwright renderer feature in their own Render Graph pass, so depth priming cannot erase them; in the Built-in pipeline they are a pass of the shader itself. Set the width in screen pixels or world centimetres, fade it with distance, and drive it with a width map or vertex alpha. Low-poly and hard-edged models get unbroken outlines after one click: Toonwright bakes smoothed normals into the mesh on import, stored so they follow skinning. For transparent objects or a whole-frame comic look, add the screen-space edge outline: a renderer feature with a Volume override in URP, a camera component in the Built-in pipeline.

Toon water and a procedural sky. Toonwright/Water has depth-banded shallow and deep colours, shore foam, crest foam, open-water foam lines, a stepped sun glint, refraction and vertex waves. Toonwright/Sky is a gradient skybox with a sun that follows your main light, banded toon clouds, a sunset tint and stars after dark. The Toonwright Wind component drives foliage sway and wave direction together.

Every rendering path. The Built-in pipeline, and URP's Forward, Forward+, Deferred and Deferred+; in URP, Toonwright/Toon renders forward-only like URP's own Complex Lit. Point and spot lights get a hard toon falloff, received shadows can be softened per material, and in URP the shaders are SRP Batcher compatible.

Easy to adopt. In URP projects, Toonwright offers on import to add its renderer feature to every URP renderer. Built-in projects need no setup. Convert existing URP Lit, Simple Lit, Complex Lit, Baked Lit, Unlit and Built-in Standard materials in one step, keeping base map, colour, normal map, emission, alpha clipping, transparency and render face.

See it working. Three demo scenes are included: a toon island with water, sky and wind, a gallery of all nine presets, and a feature gallery. The wolf, horse and cowboy models in them are yours to use.

Characters Demo. The monsters in the store images and video are from Dungeon Horde, our pack of ten stylized rigged fantasy monsters, sold separately on the Asset Store. They are not included in this package.Toonwright gives Unity projects a complete toon look: cel lighting, ink outlines, comic halftone and pen hatching, toon water and a procedural sky. It works in the Universal Render Pipeline and the Built-in pipeline, and the same material renders the same in both. The URP side is written for Unity 6 and Render Graph from the ground up.

Nine looks in one click. Choose Classic Cel, Anime, Soft Toon, Flat Bands, Comic Halftone, Ink Hatching, Glossy Toy, Painterly or Silhouette Ink from the top of the material inspector, then adjust anything. Presets change shading, outline, rim and highlights only, so your textures and colours stay as they are.

Every toon feature in one material. Toonwright/Toon has two-tone or banded shading (1 to 8 bands) or a ramp texture you can bake from a gradient in the inspector, a deep shade for a second shadow tone, and a shade mask for painting where shadows always fall. On top of that: halftone dots or pen hatching in the shade transition, toon highlights and anisotropic strand highlights for hair, rim light that follows the light side or the shadow side, matcap, emission with UV scroll and pulse, wind sway, dissolve with a glowing edge, and a dithered fade as the camera gets close. Opaque, alpha clip and four transparent blend modes are included.

Outlines that stay put. In URP, hull outlines are drawn by the Toonwright renderer feature in their own Render Graph pass, so depth priming cannot erase them; in the Built-in pipeline they are a pass of the shader itself. Set the width in screen pixels or world centimetres, fade it with distance, and drive it with a width map or vertex alpha. Low-poly and hard-edged models get unbroken outlines after one click: Toonwright bakes smoothed normals into the mesh on import, stored so they follow skinning. For transparent objects or a whole-frame comic look, add the screen-space edge outline: a renderer feature with a Volume override in URP, a camera component in the Built-in pipeline.

Toon water and a procedural sky. Toonwright/Water has depth-banded shallow and deep colours, shore foam, crest foam, open-water foam lines, a stepped sun glint, refraction and vertex waves. Toonwright/Sky is a gradient skybox with a sun that follows your main light, banded toon clouds, a sunset tint and stars after dark. The Toonwright Wind component drives foliage sway and wave direction together.

Every rendering path. The Built-in pipeline, and URP's Forward, Forward+, Deferred and Deferred+; in URP, Toonwright/Toon renders forward-only like URP's own Complex Lit. Point and spot lights get a hard toon falloff, received shadows can be softened per material, and in URP the shaders are SRP Batcher compatible.

Easy to adopt. In URP projects, Toonwright offers on import to add its renderer feature to every URP renderer. Built-in projects need no setup. Convert existing URP Lit, Simple Lit, Complex Lit, Baked Lit, Unlit and Built-in Standard materials in one step, keeping base map, colour, normal map, emission, alpha clipping, transparency and render face.

See it working. Three demo scenes are included: a toon island with water, sky and wind, a gallery of all nine presets, and a feature gallery. The wolf, horse and cowboy models in them are yours to use.

Characters Demo. The monsters in the store images and video are from Dungeon Horde, our pack of ten stylized rigged fantasy monsters, sold separately on the Asset Store. They are not included in this package.