UE5 Toon Shader Breakdown for Artists - Part 1

Character : ZuFuFu (ZZZ, HoYoverse)
Engine : Unreal Engine 5.6
Shader : Custom Toon Shader

I’ve been studying toon shaders recently, and there are so many different ways to approach them.
This video isn’t meant to show a "special approach" — it’s really just me organizing what I’ve learned so far.

I wanted to share a method that artists can build entirely inside a material, without modifying engine source code or relying on post-process tricks.
If this helps someone, I’d be genuinely happy.
And if you have better ideas or different approaches, feel free to share them in the comments — I’d love to learn together.

[timeline]
00:00 Intro
00:21 Shader Feature
01:11 Material Setup
03:43 Fix Tonemapping
04:58 Fix Eye Materials
06:03 Get Light's Direction Vector
07:21 Draw Shadow
10:48 Draw Highlight
14:52 Outline
20:49 Distance-Based Outline
24:35 Face Shadow
26:14 Get Head Direction Vectors
32:27 Environment Setup
34:08 Face Shadow with Head Direction
50:04 Bang Shadow
53:53 Result of Part 1

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