How to make a toon animation in Blender with FADE
FADE is a Blender addon with shaders, skies, and a library of assets for setting up a toon scene in Blender. This addon has different shaders, and each behaves differently with light and angle of view. For example, the Toon Solid shader is affected by light only, and the Toon Smooth shader has properties affected by the angle of view. In the video, you see how to make a toon animation in Blender with FADE.
I tried the FADE addon and found it very easy to set up a scene. The shaders are not just shaders like you see elsewhere, and these are well thought out. For example, you can add fog to the entire world (to every shader). And if you change the fog in one, it affects all the other shaders.
Toon Solid and Toon Smooth
My opinion is that the Toon Solid shader is suitable for animations, while the Toon Smooth shader is suitable for stills. While the Toon Smooth shader is more advance (or was?), the Toon Solid shader is my favorite. Because it doesn’t matter at what angle you look at it: it will stay the same. Here is the Toon Solid shader. The image says there are three styles, but I believe that noise is the 4th one. (I suppose that was the old style). To avoid confusion about what all the sliders do, I suggest turning off all styles and starting with one. Or just use one, actually.
The FADE addon in action
The library of the FADE addon
While the FADE addon comes with a reasonably extensive library of assets, I suggest adding your own assets as well. Then, you can easily delete the shader of your assets, and assign any FADE shader. A handy trick is to copy the shader with Ctrl+L, make it a single user, and then change it.
The library has three categories: Assets, Skies, and Shaders. For the assets, there are stones, grass, fern, rocks, trees, clouds, and more. There are four skies, and 5 shaders plus an outline.
Where to find the FADE addon
Please take a look at the FADE addon on Blender Market.
Oh yes, it renders very fast! And don’t forget to rotate the sun and see what happens.
