Outlines

Re-envision your game with detailed, accurate outlines.

Outlines is an image-based outline system. Instantly apply outlines to your entire scene and fine-tune outlines using local volumes. Get highly accurate outlines using various detection methods like color, depth, brightness, and normal direction. Adjust outline thickness and alpha based on the distance of each object. Make your outlines feel more organic with slight variations powered by offset and paper textures.

• Configure outline settings using global and local volumes.
• Detect outlines with a high degree of accuracy thanks to color, depth, brightness, and normal detection algorithms.
• Give a more organic feel to the outlines with variation textures.
• Fine-tune the outline thickness and alpha over distance.

Q: What are image-based outlines?

A: Image-based outlines refer to outlining objects or elements on the entire screen, as opposed to outlining specific mesh objects. It applies outlines to everything visible on the screen, including objects, effects, and other visual elements.

Q: Are these outlines intended for 2D or 3D environments?

A: The outlines can be applied to 2D and 3D environments, as they operate using a combination of depth, normals, color, and luminance to determine where outlines should be placed. The outlines fully support both 2D and 3D scenarios.

Q: What techniques are used for generating the outlines?

A: The current version uses techniques such as difference from depth, normal vector, color, and luminance to generate the outlines.

Q: What is the performance for this asset?

A: The current version runs at 0.1ms on an Nvidia 3070M and at 13ms on a Google Pixel 4a.

Q: Can these outlines be applied to particle systems or visual effects (VFX)?

A: Yes - The outlines can be applied to particle systems or visual effects.

Q: What customization options are available for the outlines?

A: Customization options include outline thickness, outline color, scaling of thickness and alpha based on distance or uniformity, and options to configure each of the depth-detection types. You can also use an offset texture to slightly offset the outlines, and a paper texture to apply a paper effect to the scene. In addition, you can apply a blur to the outlines to soften them.

Q: Can the outlines work with transparent objects?

A: The outlines do work with transparent objects. You can set whether outlines will apply to transparent objects using the render pass event option in the Enqueue Pass component.

Q: How are thickness variations controlled for the outlines?

A: Thickness variations can be controlled through options such as scaling based on distance, uniform scaling, or resolution-aware scaling to ensure a consistent outline appearance.

Q: Is there support for customizing the outline colors?

A: Customization options for outline colors, including support for alpha values, is available to create visually interesting effects.

Q: Can I customize the outlines on a per-mesh basis?

A: There are no options that support the ability to configure outline color or thickness on a per-mesh basis.

Q: How do blur options affect the outlines?

A: This feature allows you to configure the blurriness of the outlines, with blur blurring the output of the outline pass to varying degrees. This executes in a single pass and uses an optional noise algorithm to jitter and smooth the blur amount.