Shading Rig

Dynamic Art-directable Stylised Shading for 3D Characters

As seen on Real-Time Live! SIGGRAPH 2021

RTL Session Page

Demo begins at 18:41.

Toon shading often gives poor results on 3D characters. Rotoscoped shadows used in film aren't real-time for games. Current toon shaded games use painted/textured/baked shadows that don't change with lighting.

Shading Rig is a new workflow to animate artist-defined shading with lighting changes, and preserve art-direction in real-time toon shaded games.

We achieve this with a "rig" of shadow editing primitives designed based on fundamental artistic shading principles. These primitives can be animated to achieve highly stylised shading under dynamic lighting.