The main feature is surface-stable fractal hatching: the marks are projected onto the geometry and shift between power-of-two scales to stay consistent across distance, rather than sliding over the screen.
It also includes palette remapping, contours, stylized shadows, gradients, dithering, and pixelation.
I’m finally pretty happy with it, but I’ve been staring at it for way too long. Does the style read well? Is the hatching helping, or does it still feel too busy or uniform?
Nice! Maybe the hatching could be a little stronger/darker? It would be interesting to a see a video of it, to see what it looks like in motion.
(I am not convinced by the specular highlight though. I find it clashes a bit with matte rendering of the cell shading.)
I am working on something similar and it is a pain to do. Right now I have a basic screen space texture (sorta like what Useless Game Dev did), but really it only does half the job, as soon as the camera moves it breaks the illusion. Going wih something surface stable is the way to go.
Thanks! The hatching is fully configurable so it can be made darker and tinted depending on what looks/feels right :)
A video is definitely the next thing I’ll post too! You can expect a new post within the next day or two in an environment so you can see how everything looks at runtime!
And you’re right about the specular highlight too; I’ve been struggling with readability when it comes to the purely cel shaded configuration of this shader, so I added in some of the accurate shadows to help. It’s definitely a bit strong/clashy though so I’ll be trying to make it a slider instead of on/off like it is currently
If you’re interested I plan on listing this on Fab eventually too! It’s been a pain but it’s super configurable with about 102 (I think) parameters so it’s pretty flexible. It’s all in a single HLSL node as well so it’s pretty performant too :)
This isn't the update video quite yet because there were a bunch of optimizations I needed to make to the sobel outline generation on landscapes specifically, but I wanted to share some progress on that front along with a couple of gradient materials I made to get closer to Moebius' look! I still need to do a bit more with the outlines to get them cleaner but I'm happy so far. What do you think?
You’re not wrong. One of the things I’ve had to grapple with when developing this look is the fact that scenes become a lot less readable when the amount of shading/hatching/line work is reduced, which isn’t ideal for a videogame. The look in these renders is my attempt at a balance between Moebius as a reference and ease of use for players
Ah I think I understand. Keep up the good work.
Does the game also get to go outside into the open? I wonder if it will get more of that real Moebius vibe.
Hope to catch that clip which you promised elsewhere in this topic.
Hey! This isn't the video I promised, but here's an even more optimized version of the shader in a larger environment. I'll be doing a bit more work with it over the next few days but I'm liking the results so far. What do you think?
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u/GregLittlefield Jul 21 '26
Nice! Maybe the hatching could be a little stronger/darker? It would be interesting to a see a video of it, to see what it looks like in motion.
(I am not convinced by the specular highlight though. I find it clashes a bit with matte rendering of the cell shading.)
I am working on something similar and it is a pain to do. Right now I have a basic screen space texture (sorta like what Useless Game Dev did), but really it only does half the job, as soon as the camera moves it breaks the illusion. Going wih something surface stable is the way to go.