5 ways to draw an outline (Alexander Ameye)
- Auto-discovered
Alexander Ameye
Visit resource ↗Description
Five Ways to Draw an Outline is Alexander Ameye's 2021 note (alexanderameye.github.io / ameye.dev). It surveys five game outline methods, citing Sable and The Last of Us where lines support comic style or stealth highlights.
Coverage spans rim fresnel, vertex-extruded hulls in object or clip space, blurred silhouette buffers, jump-flood wide lines (Ben Golus), and screen-space edge detection with Roberts cross or Sobel on depth, normals, or color, plus masking and threshold tweaks.
For intermediate readers who know normals, spaces, and shader stages. Unity HLSL is shown, but mesh cost, blur passes, and per-object control trade-offs apply broadly.
Free long-form post with diagrams and shader snippets; intro links Ameye's Linework toolkit.
Helps pick an outline strategy before art and GPU budgets are fixed. Often cited in Unity graphics circles; see also his edge-detection note.
Related resources
- 2D Water Shader Breakdown (Cyanilux)
A Shader Graph breakdown of stylized 2D water in Unity URP: sprite reflections via a second camera, scrolling noise distortion, fake highlights, and tilemap shoreline ripples for pixel art.
100% match · <shaders><intermediate><blog><catalog><cyanilux><free><highlights><mode> - Book (w/ Turnable Pages) Breakdown (Cyanilux)
Cyanilux breakdown of a URP spellbook with vertex-shader page turns, flipbook page textures, dual Lit Graphs, pooling C# driver, and optional Blender setup notes.
100% match · <shaders><intermediate><blog><around><book><catalog><cyanilux><free> - Cloud Shader Breakdown (Cyanilux)
Cyanilux Shader Graph tutorial for URP that builds animated cloud decks on a subdivided plane with layered world-space noise, vertex displacement, and depth-based fading at intersections.
100% match · <shaders><intermediate><blog><catalog><create><cyanilux><free><game> - Crystal Shader Breakdown (Cyanilux)
A Cyanilux Shader Graph walkthrough for Unity URP that builds an unlit transparent crystal with object-space Y colour gradients, camera opaque-texture refraction, Fresnel opacity, and HDR glow for bloom.
100% match · <shaders><intermediate><blog><catalog><cyanilux><free><goes><includes> - Custom Renderer Features (Cyanilux)
Long-form Cyanilux guide to URP ScriptableRendererFeature and ScriptableRenderPass code: example effects, RTHandle setup, blit paths, and Unity 6 Render Graph notes.
100% match · <shaders><blog><catalog><cyanilux><either><example><free><goes> - Depth (Cyanilux)
Long-form Cyanilux tutorial on Unity depth spaces, Z buffers, Scene Depth sampling, SV_Depth, and world-position reconstruction in URP and HDRP.
100% match · <shaders><blog><catalog><cyanilux><explaining><free><includes><online> - Dissolve Shader Breakdown (Cyanilux)
URP Shader Graph breakdown by Cyanilux on dissolve effects: Step and noise clip fragments with glowing edges, height-axis variants, and view-space UVs to reduce seam artifacts.
100% match · <shaders><intermediate><blog><catalog><create><cyanilux><example><free> - Fire/Flame Shader Breakdown (Cyanilux)
Shader Graph breakdown of billboard fire on a quad: scrolling noise warps UVs for a flame texture or procedurally generated ellipse shapes, with per-instance randomization.
100% match · <shaders><intermediate><blog><catalog><cyanilux><free><object><online> - Gentle Introduction to Realtime Fluid Simulation for Programmers and Technical Artists (Shahriar Shahrabi)
Shahriar Shahrabi's October 2021 Medium tutorial explains real-time grid fluid simulation for programmers and technical artists with geometric intuition rather than dense Navier-Stokes notation.
100% match · <blog><access><article><artists><crawl><cyanilux><free><gist> - see here for slides
Gilbert Sanders, Principal Artist at Guerrilla Games, gave this GDC 2018 Visual Arts session on vegetation in Horizon Zero Dawn.
100% match · <intermediate><artists><crawl><cyanilux><games><gist><http><linked> - New AMD Radeon Developer Tool Suite update brings shader source code, Extended PIX Markers, and command-line capture
New AMD Radeon Developer Tool Suite update brings shader source code, Extended PIX Markers, and command-line capture is a technical blog article by Chris Hesik. AMD GPUOpen…
100% match · <shaders><intermediate><blog><article><free><post><programmers><related> - On Rendering the Sky, Sunsets, and Planets
On Rendering the Sky, Sunsets, and Planets is a technical blog article by Maxime Heckel. Maxime Heckel write-up on implementing atmospheric scattering in the browser for…
100% match · <shaders><intermediate><blog><article><free><post><programmers><real> - Single-pass palette refinement and ordered dithering
Single-pass palette refinement and ordered dithering is a technical blog article by Pekka Väänänen. Experiment showing online k-means color quantization that produces ordered…
100% match · <intermediate><blog><article><free><includes><online><post><programmers> - Modern rendering culling techniques
Modern rendering culling techniques is a technical blog article by Nikita Krupitskas. Technical blog post by Nikita Krupitskas surveying culling techniques used in modern…
100% match · <intermediate><blog><article><free><pipelines><post><programmers><real> - Custom SRP 6.2.0 3D Color LUT
Custom SRP 6.2.0 3D Color LUT is a technical blog article by Jasper Flick. Catlike Coding Custom SRP tutorial that upgrades the color-grading LUT from a simulated 2D strip to a…
100% match · <shaders><blog><article><free><post><programmers><real><render> - Specialization Constants // Vulkan For Beginners #29
Specialization Constants // Vulkan For Beginners #29 is a free YouTube video on the OGLDEV channel, an installment in the Vulkan For Beginners tutorial series. OGLDEV Vulkan For…
100% match · <shaders><access><create><free><mode><multiple><pipelines><programmers> - How to Color Low Poly Terrain with Gradients and Curves
How to Color Low Poly Terrain with Gradients and Curves is a technical blog article by Tâm Trần Ngọc. Tutorial explaining how to color low poly terrain with a slope gradient, a…
100% match · <shaders><intermediate><blog><article><explaining><free><post><programmers> - Old school rendering rant - Tomb Raider
Old school rendering rant - Tomb Raider is a long-form Medium article by Reinig David in a series on late-1990s software rendering techniques. The post dissects Tomb Raider III…
100% match · <intermediate><blog><article><before><book><free><post><programmers> - Texel Density Explained
Texel Density Explained is a Hugh Chew YouTube lesson on texel density for environment and prop art, covering metrics, UV setup, and how density differs from visual fidelity. It…
100% match · <around><artists><before><free><game><player><real><unreal> - What Is Clean Topology? Part 2: Specific Examples
ArtOfSoulburn tutorial video explaining what clean or good topology means in 3D modeling, as Part 2 with specific examples.
100% match · <explaining><free><games><like><methods><online><pipelines><related>