Redshift Contour

The Contour shader draws lines around an object's silhouette and along prominent internal edges that define an objects shape. Redshift's line drawing is shading based so it works automatically with reflections, refractions, depth of field, and motion blur but it is confined to the inner bounds of an object. Technically, a contour can never render outside of an object's silhouette but a workaround can be used to achieve a similar visual effect as described in the Contour Behavior section below, Breaking Boundaries.

The Contour shader is one of three shaders that make up Redshift's core offering of non-photorealistic tools. The Toon Material is used as the primary shading element to create stylized cel shaded looks, the Contour shader is used to create outlines around your objects, and the Tonemap Pattern texture adds a screen space pattern to your shading to mimic a halftone dot effect and others.

Example Graph

Basic Setup

Thickness based on distance

To shrink contours as they fade into the distance a State node can be used. Create a State node and use the ray length output into a Change Range node. The ray length produces the distance an object is from the camera so the change range input should be set to the maximum distance in scene units to the minimum distance to control the line thickness into the distance. The change range output should be set to the min and maximum thicknesses for your contours. For example, if the farthest part of your scene is 100 units away you should set the change range input from 100 min to 0 max and if you want your contours to start at full width close to the camera and shrink down to half size in the distance set the output min to 0.5 and the output max to 1.

Contour Behavior

External vs Internal Lines

A scene can exhibit many different scenarios and understanding how contours behave in different conditions is important to getting the most out of them. To start with the basics, External Lines draw a line around the silhouette of an object while Internal Lines draw a silhouette and have the ability to draw lines along interior details of an object. Both types of lines can be used at the same time, however, external lines are always drawn on top of internal lines. In the examples below, external lines are black and internal lines are red, note how the red internal lines are still drawn around the silhouette of an object but they capture additional detail that external lines cannot. Line thickness and other settings have been exaggerated to make the differences readily apparent, thin lines are generally better for more small details.

However, if an internal line is thicker than an external line it will peek out from under the external lines. In the example below, the black external lines have a thickness of 10 and the red internal lines are animated from a thickness of 0 all the way up to 20. Around the half way point of the animation both lines have the same thickness, but as the thickness continues to climb the red internal lines can be seen next to the external lines along the silhouette of the object.

How your objects are constructed also has an impact on the appearance of contour lines. Since external lines only draw a line around the silhouette of an object, there can be a large difference between whether your objects are combined into a single mesh or made up of several smaller objects. In the example below, the robot model has been combined into a single mesh which completely changes where the black external lines are visible. By comparison, the red internal lines occupy the same general location but they are now uncovered in many areas.

Intersections and Overlaps

Contours can behave differently when other objects intersect with or render in front of an object with a contour, this is dependent on the Detect Separate Meshes parameter. By default, when disabled, overlapping and intersecting objects do not create contours.

However, when Detect Separate Meshes is enabled, contours are drawn around the silhouette of overlapping objects and along any mesh intersections. Note that the contour does not draw on top of the overlapping or intersecting object — the blue spheres in the example below — the contour is only ever drawn on the object that has contours applied to it.

Breaking Boundaries

Contours cannot be drawn outside the bounds of the objects that they are applied to, but it is possible to create a visual illusion that contours are rendered outside the bounds of an object. Since an object passing in front of an object with contours causes a line to be drawn, this can be leveraged to create a convincing effect that contours have no limits. Essentially, this requires all objects in a scene to use contours, and most importantly, that a background object uses contours so that the edges can be drawn anywhere outside the bounds of an object that appears in front of that background.

In the examples below, the foreground objects have red internal lines and black external lines, while the background cyke object has dark blue internal lines and light blue external lines.

With all the different colors, this can start to look like a bit of a visual mess — however, we can leverage this behavior and use it to our advantage to create very stylized looks. In general, this trick works best with contours that have the same color so the difference between foreground and background object contours cannot be distinguished. In the example below, all contours use the same Maxon noise texture to control the thickness modifier, allowing for variable width lines. In the first example, there is no way to distinguish between foreground or background contours resulting in the illusion that the lines are breaking out of the boundary of the foreground objects resulting in a very stylized effect. In the middle example, the background contours have been changed to red to demonstrate the difference. In the last example you can see how the scene looks if no background contours are used, the foreground contours are cleanly cut off along the silhouette of the objects.

Combined with a toon shader and a bump map to distort the tone mapping it is possible to bring all these elements together for different artistic looks.

Parameters

General

Controls if contours are visible in reflections. Disabling Visible in Reflection stops contours from appearing in reflections, this includes self reflections.

In the examples below, a rough mirror is placed next to the toon objects. When disabled, contours cannot be seen in the mirror.


Visible in Reflections: Enabled (default)	Disabled

Controls if contours are visible in refractions. Disabling Visible in Refraction stops contours from appearing in refractions, including self refractions.

In the examples below, a smudged transmissive window is placed in front of the toon objects. When Disabled, contours cannot be seen through the glass.


Visible in Refractions: Enabled (default)	Disabled

External

Sets the color of external lines. This can also be driven by a texture.


External Line Color: Black	White	Pink and Blue	Textured

Controls the maximum thickness of the external lines. The Thickness parameter only accepts a constant value, to vary the thickness use the Thickness Modifier instead.

The thickness parameter is measured in pixels for a 1920x1080 resolution image, rendering in other resolutions rescales the thickness automatically so that it appears to have the same relative thickness at any resolution.

External lines will cover up Internal lines if they occupy the same location and are thicker than Internal lines.

The width of all contour lines in a scene can also be scaled with the Contour Scale option found in the Globals tab of the Render Settings.


External Line Thickness: 0	3	8	15

Changes the width of the external lines, connect a texture here to vary the thickness along external lines. Lower values decrease the width of a line, with 0 resulting in no visible thickness, while higher values increase the width and a value of 1 results in full thickness. The maximum width of a line is always limited by the Thickness parameter, increase the overall thickness in order to give yourself more room for thickness variation.


Thickness Modifier: Maxon Noise with animated color	Animated Texture

Controls if overlapping or intersecting meshes create contour for external lines . When enabled, contours are drawn around objects that intersect with or appear in front of an object with contours.

Contours cannot draw on top of overlapping or intersecting objects, instead they draw next to the overlapping and intersecting objects within their own boundaries.


Detect Separate Meshes: Disabled (default)	Enabled

Internal

Enables or disables contour lines drawn along the prominent internal edges of an object. Use the Angle Threshold parameter to control which edges receive internal lines.


Internal Line: Enabled	Disabled

Controls the maximum thickness of the internal lines. The Thickness parameter only accepts a constant value, to vary the thickness use the Thickness Modifier instead.

External lines will cover up Internal lines if they occupy the same location and are thicker than Internal lines.

The width of all contour lines in a scene can also be scaled with the Contour Scale option found in the Globals tab of the Render Settings.


Thickness: 0	2	4

Changes the width of the internal lines, connect a texture here to vary the thickness along internal lines. Lower values decrease the width of a line, with 0 resulting in no visible thickness, while higher values increase the width and a value of 1 results in full thickness. The maximum width of a line is always limited by the Thickness parameter, increase the overall thickness in order to give yourself more room for thickness variation.


Thickness Modifier: Maxon Noise with animated color	Animated Texture

Controls the type of normal that is used for detecting internal edges.

When using Smooth Normal, by default, the shading normals are used which is commonly the best method as it will tend to capture the most prominent edges and detect edge breaks as long as the Angle Threshold is low enough.

When using Geometric Normals, the edges of each polygon are easily detected for line rendering. Using geometric normals can result in a wireframe style look at low Threshold values.


Normal Type: Smooth Normal	Geometric Normal

Controls when an internal line is detected and drawn based on the difference in angle between neighboring normals. Higher values result in fewer internal lines while lower values result in more lines. In general, it is recommended to start adjusting Angle Threshold to establish the main internal contours and then adjust Depth Threshold for additional control.


Angle Threshold: 5 - 90 Normal Type: Smooth	5 - 90 Geometric

Controls how far apart two identically oriented faces can be in scene units before an edge is detected, this is based on z depth and the camera's angle. Higher values result in fewer edges being drawn because the faces need to be farther apart before edges can be detected. A value of 0 results in the internal lines covering the entire object. If you are already using a low Angle Threshold, changing this value may not result in much of a difference — balancing the two is important to finding the right look for your scene.

This parameter is in scene units, be certain to use values that make sense for your scene's scale. For example, if 10 is the selected Depth Threshold then only identically oriented faces beyond 10 scene units will be eligible for line drawing.


Depth Threshold: Increasing from 0 Angle Threshold: 180	Increasing from 0 45

Controls if overlapping or intersecting meshes create contour for internal lines . When enabled, contours are drawn around objects that intersect with or appear in front of an object with contours.