Flat Kit: Toon Shading and Water

The custom shading model is versatile enough to work great for classic cel/toon shading and for unique styles of experimental projects.

Demo Video | Documentation

🆕 NEW IN VERSION 4.0 🆕

• Pixelation image effect (+ new demo scene) for a stylish low-res look
• Mesh processor that generates perfectly smooth normals that greatly improve object-based outlines
• New demo scene "Desert" showing a Moebius-esque style using the Outline image effect
• Stylized Surface materials now support Local Space Height Gradients
• Complete Inspector UI overhaul of Stylized Surface and Water shaders (+ tooltips on ALL parameters)

⭐ FEATURES ⭐

✔ Feature-rich shading model covers a wide range of stylized rendering styles.

✔ Stylized water: super versatile shader and assets that can handle anything from coffee in a cup to an open ocean. Includes buoy script for floating objects to remain on the surface. The water shader is available only in URP.

✔ Outline effect: depth, normal and color outlines that works both with isometric and perspective cameras.

✔ Stylized fog: Multi-stop horizontal/vertical gradient Fog Image Effect.

✔ Pixelation: Stylish retro effect with large juicy pixels.

✔ Terrain shader that works with Unity or third party terrain.

✔ Light Plane shader for 3D highlights and god rays.

✔ All Unity-supported platforms: all shaders and scripts support mobile (Android and iOS), WebGL, consoles and everything in between.

✔ VR and AR: Full XR support, including Single Pass Stereo Rendering.

✔ Built-in and URP support - Flat Kit supports both rendering pipelines.

✔ All latest Unity features are always supported: SRP batcher, LOD cross-fade, you name it.

✔ Battle tested - lots of games built with Flat Kit have been successfully released on Steam, App Store, Google Play, Nintendo Switch and other stores.

✨ AND ALSO ✨

• Precise control over shadows - ideal for character lighting
• Ability to control Unity built-in shadows
• Indirect lighting and stylized lightmap support
• Vertex color support, including Polybrush
• Intuitive, simple and streamlined interface — use only what you need
• Color the scene precisely — without guesswork
• Full source code is included
• All features are fully documented and have a demo scene
• Regular updates and new features
• Fast and friendly support

🎁 GIFT! 🎁

If you buy Flat Kit you get a 50% discount on Quibli and Chroma! Check out how Quibli and Flat Kit complement each other.

Core toon shader overview:

★ Cel shading with parametric banding: single, steps, curve

★ Independent cel layers that can be layered to achieve unique look

★ Height gradient layer

★ Outline shader with multiple modes

★ Blend between normal and cel shading with a slider

★ Specular and rim lighting bring stylized lighting controls to your objects

★ Albedo, normal, emission and detail maps support

★ Reusable custom lighting in a shader library that you can integrate in your shaders (optional).

🏆 Flat Kit has been nominated for Best artistic tool award by Unity! 🏆

If you have any questions, please let us know!

Discord | info@dustyroom.com | @_dstrm | Online manual

Release Notes

Full release notes

4.9.5

• Improved baked global illumination integration for the Terrain shader in Unity 6 and later.
• General usability improvements.

4.9.4

• Improved baked light integration in Unity 6.0.12 and later.
• Added support for DOTS to the water shader (enable FLAT_KIT_DOTS_INSTANCING_ON in Water.shader).
• Improved Render Graph integration for all image effects: Outline, Fog, Pixelation.

4.9.3

• Fixed an issue with SRP batching in Stylized Surface shader.
• Improved the Pixelation image effect when using Render Graph.

4.9.2

• Improved compatibility with Unity 6: proble blending, global illumination.

4.9.0

• All image effects (Outline, Fog, Pixelation) now support Render Graph in Unity 6.0.16 or later. The effects work with and without the Compatibility Mode (Project Settings -> Graphics).

4.8.0

• Improved support for Adaptive Light Probes in Unity 6.0.
• Improved support for the Forward+ rendering path in Unity 6.0.16 or later.
• Fixed Override Light Direction setting on the Terrain shader.

4.7.8

• Fixes and improvements to static lightmapping of the Stylized Surface shader.

4.7.6

• Fixes and improvements to per-object outline rendering.

4.7.5 (All future updates are for Unity 2022 or later)

• Added object dissolve effect example to the Room demo scene (press Play to view).

4.7.1

• Improved shader compatibility with Unity 6.0.12 and later.

4.7.0

• Per-object Outline feature in Stylized Surface: outline shader pass is now applied using a custom Renderer Feature (as opposed to additional object shader pass). This significantly improves performance of per-object outlines and supports SRP batching.
• The migration to the new per-object outlines happens fully automatically when you view the Inspector of a scene object using the Outline feature.

4.6.1

• Improved support for Unity 6.0.8 and later (including OUTPUT_SH4 error).
• Fixed an issue with the Override Light Direction setting of the Stylized Surface shader.
• General usability improvements.

4.6.0

• Added Unity 6 Preview support.

4.5.0

• Improved shader support of DOTS and the Hybrid Renderer.
• Fixed shader variant stripping of the Stylized Surface shader.
• Fixed alphatest for cutout mode of Stylized Surface shader.
• Added ability to change blending of vertex colors to be applied after shading.
• Improved rendering of baked lightmaps.
• Fixed flipped baked lighting direction when using light probes.
• Improved tooltips throughout the asset.

4.4.7

• BREAKING CHANGE: We've changed the way baked lightmaps and light probes are applied. It now looks much more coherent with the cell shading stylization.

4.4.0

• Added shader support for URP 17 (Unity 2023.3).

4.3.0

• New! We've added "Fade With Distance" feature to the Outline image effect. If enabled, the lines become more transparent the further they are from the camera.

4.2.0

• Stylized Water shader now supports multiple lights.
• Decals now correctly receive shadows in URP.
• Fixed image effect materials not being initialized in the Editor in rare circumstances.

4.1.5

• Improved the Inspector of image effect settings to make them editable directly in the URP Renderer UI.
• Fixed an issue where image effects are sometimes not included in the project builds.

4.1.0

• Improved backwards compatibility of image effects (Outlines, Fog) with Unity 2021 and prior.
• Inspector UI improvements for the image effects.

4.0.0 HUGE UPDATE!

• Pixelation image effect (+ new demo scene) for a stylish low-res look
• Mesh processor that generates perfectly smooth normals that greatly improve object-based outlines
• New demo scene "Desert" showing a Moebius-esque style using the Outline image effect
• Stylized Surface materials now support Local Space Height Gradients
• Complete Inspector UI overhaul of Stylized Surface and Water shaders (+ tooltips on ALL parameters)

3.9.6

• Stylized Surface shader now stylizes all additional light sources in Forward+ rendering path.

3.9.2

• Fixed shader error in 'FlatKit/Stylized Surface': 'OUTPUT_SH': Too many arguments for a macro call in Unity 2023.1.9+.

3.9.1

• Fixed an issue where outline image effect would sometimes show the scene as grey.
• Improved SRP Batcher compatibility in the latest versions of Unity.

3.9.0

• Detail Maps! We've expanded the texture functionality in the stylized rendering to include detail maps. Now you have ability to layer two textures with independent blending settings.
• Fog effect! We've added an option for the fog to apply in world space, allowing a nice variety of new styles, a-la Monument Valley.
• We've changed the blending of the Albedo (Base) map to mix with the stylized shading in a cleaner, more visually appealing way.
• Reworked the Outline and Fog image effects to correctly render in XR mode when using recent versions of Unity.

3.8.0

• Improved object-based outline effect integration with the Curved World asset.
• Various UI fixes and improvements.

3.7.0

• Improved shader variant stripping of all shaders. This reduces build size and duration.
• Skybox shader: added an option to remove color banding when using two similar colors.
• Improved integration with URP Forward+ rendering path.
• Terrain: Updated rendering layers with the latest version of URP.
• Improved outline integration with the Curved World asset.
• URP decals are now applied after lighting is calculated.

3.6.0

• BREAKING CHANGE: We've improved the way base texture is used in stylized rendering. This may change the way your textured objects look.
• Improved support for Light Layers.
• Improved support for SSAO in Deferred rendering path.
• Fixed an issue with emission on textured renderers.
• Improved the water shader inspector.
• Improved shader variant striping for Stylized Surface, Terrain and Water shaders. This results in shorter build times and binary sizes.

3.5.0

• Added support for Unity 2023.1 and URP 15.
• Fixed shader variant stripping in Unity 2020 / URP 10.

3.4.1

• Fixed a build error that occured in Unity 2021 on Android and iOS. Unexplicably, Unity uses two different URP versions in one Unity version.

3.4.0

• Added support for dynamic lightmaps and debug display in URP.
• Improved Terrain shader compatibility with the Forward+ rendering path.
• Added suport for screen-space shadows and reflection probe blending in the Terrain shader.
• The Buoyancy component now supports remmebering the initial rotation of the object.
• Water shader UI improvements.
• Improved the appearance of demo scenes Room and Wanderer.
• Added two water materials to the Ocean Islands demo scene.

3.3.0

• BREAKING CHANGE: If a water material uses foam with a texture, it might look slightly different with this update. The foam direction formula had a bug, which caused foam textures to be slightly stretched. This is now fixed.
• Added support for Unity's new LOD cross-fade functionality.
• Added support for the Forward+ rendering path.
• Fixed depth outlines in the Outline Renderer Feature.
• Fixed rendering of shadows on the Water shader.
• Fixed tiling of water when using a foam texture.
• Fixed an issue where sometimes the Outline shader pass was not properly disabled, causing SRP Batching to break.

3.2.5

• Fixed water rendering in WebGL builds.
• URP demo scenes now auto-configure the URP Asset/Renderer. No maual configuration is needed anymore, removed actions from the Readme config section.

3.2.0

• Water shader now supports for SRP Batcher.
• Water shader now supports DOTS.
• Terrain shader now supports Height-based blending.
• Fixed an issue where the Outline and Fog image effects Render Events were not being set correctly.
• Improved compatibility with Unity 2022.2.

3.1.0

• Improved emission on the Stylized Surface shader. Now whole-object emission does not require a texture.
• Added assembly definition files. Now Flat Kit scripts are not being recompiled when you change code, saving hot reload time.
• Added an option to apply image effects in Scene view.
• Fixed an issue where image effects were sometimes not included in builds.
• Fixed vertex displacement of the water shader.
• Re-organized demo folders structure, now it's much cleaner.

3.0.6

• [URP] Fixed a bug where image effect shaders did not get included in some game builds.
• [Water shader] Improved compatibility with Xbox and PS5.

3.0.5

• [URP] Improved performance of Fog and Outline image effect initialization.
• [URP] Fixed a bug where image effects would stop working when changing Quality Levels at runtime.

3.0.1

• [Built-in RP] Improved compatibility of the Stylized Surface, Cutout and Outline shaders with the Deferred rendering path.
• Improved support of Unity 2022.1.

3.0.0

• [URP] Added the "Render Event" setting to the Fog and Outline image effects. This allows excluding transparent ane UI objects from being affected by the effects.
• Outline Image Effect now preserves the alpha channel for better effect stacking.
• Flat Kit Depth Normals Renderer Feature has been deprecated in favor of the pass that has been added in URP 10.
• General UI improvements and code refactoring.

2.9.7

• [Built-in RP] Fixed outline rendering offset on Android builds.

2.9.5

• Improved rendering in the URP deferred rendering path.

2.9.0

• [XR] The #1 requested XR feature is done - Outline and Fog effects now support Single Pass Stereo rendering. As far as we know, Flat Kit is currently the only asset with image effects that correctly support Single Pass stereo.
• [XR] Fixed "Light Plane" and Skybox shaders compatibility with XR.
• Updated light sharpness stylization for baked Global Illumination.
• Added custom Terrain Material Editor for better integration with Unity terrain.
• Improved how image effect shaders are referenced, now these shaders are not included in game builds if not used.
• [Stylized Surface] "Receive shadows" toggle now uses the same keywords as Unity's standard shaders, making this setting survive shader replacement.
• [Image effects] Outline and Fog image effects now use "Before Rendering Post-Processing" render event. With the new changes to these effects, this should work for all configurations.

Full release notes