yShade - Easy Cel Dither Shading

This source plugin adds two independent global rendering passes:

• Cel / Halftone: quantized lighting bands, transition patterns, metallic and sky controls, specular and rim accents, and depth/normal outlines.
• Screen Dithering: ordered or noise-based color reduction, custom palettes, monochrome tinting, and optional low-resolution downsampling.

The plugin creates its view extensions automatically for supported worlds. Existing materials and level content stay in place. You do not need a BP_CelDither, MF_CelDither, post-process material, post-process volume, texture, or content asset.

Requirements

• Unreal Engine 5.4-5.8 using the matching version-specific package
• Windows 64-bit
• Deferred Shading and Shader Model 5 or newer for Cel / Halftone
• ES3.1 feature level or newer for final-screen dithering
• A compatible C++ toolchain when packaging the source plugin

The validated Windows configuration is DirectX 12 with Shader Model 6. Forward Shading, mobile rendering for the Cel / Halftone pass, and Substrate GBuffer layouts are not supported in this release.

Documentation

• Install and create the first look
• Understand every settings group
• Control the effect from Blueprint or C++
• Package a Development or Shipping build
• Diagnose rendering and setup problems

Tested targets

Unreal Engine 5.8 was validated on Windows 64-bit in Editor, Development, and Shipping targets, including global shader initialization. Unreal Engine 5.4 was also locally validated. Version-specific source packages are supplied for Unreal Engine 5.4 through 5.8.