MK Manga Shader

🎨The Idea🎨

Bring Manga to Life in 3D!

As a fellow creator driven by a love for manga's timeless artistry, I've crafted the MK Manga Shader to help artists like you bring that authentic manga feel into the 3D world.

MK Manga Shader transforms your 3D creations into stunning, manga-style artwork using a powerful, artist-friendly shader package for Unity. Whether you're a game developer, animator, or 3D artist, the idea of this package is to solve the challenge of replicating the intricate pen strokes, bold patterns (grid foil), and dramatic lighting of traditional manga in a 3D environment. With tools for stylized shadows, dynamic cel shading, and detailed pen shading, MK Manga bridges the gap between 2D manga aesthetics and 3D creativity—all through a streamlined, easy-to-use interface.

🔥To tackle that idea the package consists of the following main shaders🔥

• 6 Core shaders for unlit, simple lighting and physically based lighting. Those shaders are very flexible and can turn any input into a manga style shading. Per-object outline variants are also available.
• UI Shaders. Create speech bubbles using outlines and stencil.
• Extra shaders for hair and skin to come even closer to a manga-like style.
• Gradient skybox shader. Lets you create simple greyscale gradient skyboxes.

Follow Development: Trello

Demo: WebGL

⤴️MK Manga Shader synergizes very well with MK Edge Detection.⤴️(this combination was used for the school example scene)

If you miss any essential feature or asset resource, feel free to drop me a message at any time to improve the shader!

🌄Gooch Lighting & Color Control🌄

Interpolate shadows and highlights into specific colors, and adjust contrast, saturation, and brightness with pre- and post-composite modes. You can even choose from three styles of how the grayscale conversion is created. However this shader is not limited to grayscale color only.

🌌Physically-Based & Customizable🌌

Supports albedo, emission, normal, height, and occlusion maps with detail enhancements. You can follow a common physically based workflow and all properties are converted into a manga style.

🌑Dynamic Cel Shading🌑

Define the base lighting style of your scene with crisp cel shading. Easily tweak smoothness, thresholds, and layers to capture a wide range of manga-inspired lighting effects.

An optional second cel layer can further refine your lighting.

🌓Stylized Shadows🌓

Achieve sharp, bold shadows or smooth gradients, fully customizable to match manga’s iconic high-contrast style. Shadows are stylized with fine control over smoothness and thresholds.

✍️Gradient Overlay✍️

Add subtle gradients to your objects with two customizable colors and a 3D direction, enhancing the albedo and overall look of your scene.

📐Texture Projections📐

For many features you can choose from multiple projection modes to apply patterns seamlessly:

- Regular UV.

- Screen Space.

- Stabilized Screen Space (minimizes scrolling effects).

- Triplanar (Object or World Space).

🖌️Per-object Outlines🖌️

Outlines are customizable per object and fading with distance for a polished look. Additional parameters will help you to create a good-looking per-object outline even on objects with difficult geometry.

🖋️Pen Styles for Shading🖋️

Replicate classic manga shading with three unique pen styles:

- Cross Hatching: Add depth with six-step hatch patterns.

- Pattern Overlay: Overlay dots or textures on lit or shadowed areas.

- Sketch: Use custom textures for pencil-like scribbles or sketches.

🌟Silhouette Shading🌟

Create rim lighting effects with two modes:

- Single Color for consistent highlights.

- Split Lit/Shadow Colors for more dynamic effects.

🖼️Projective Overlays🖼️

Overlay scalable patterns onto your meshes, such as grids or textures. Includes all projection modes for seamless integration.

🖊️Ink & Strokes🖊️

Overlay textures or procedurally generate strokes to simulate inner lines and brushwork, adding depth and authenticity to your models.

Texture Mode: Overlay user-provided textures for inner lines or blotches.

Brush Mode: Detect edges procedurally based on an input texture (for example your albedo map) and generate strokes automatically.

🪞Stutter/Redrawn Effects🪞

Simulate a hand-drawn or animated feel with subtle stuttering or redrawing patterns for dynamic, lively shading.

💾Updates + Maintenance + Support💾

All of my assets receive updates, are maintained regularly and supported as best as possible.

🌈Do you have some cool stuff to show?

I would love to see your results (high resolution screenshots / videos) using the shader. Just drop me a message.

💡Questions, bug reports, feature requests, feedback or just to say hello💡

Feel free to get in touch via [email protected] at any time.