yShade - Easy Hand-Drawn Shading

This source plugin transforms an existing deferred-rendered scene with four coordinated treatments:

• painted color simplification and tinting
• organic depth, normal, and color-edge ink contours
• configurable shadow strokes
• procedural paper grain, fibers, and warmth

The pass is installed automatically for each supported world. Existing opaque materials, lights, meshes, skeletal characters, landscapes, and levels stay in place. No required Blueprint actor, Material Function, post-process material, post-process volume, texture, or content asset is needed.

Requirements

• Unreal Engine 5.4-5.8 using the matching version-specific package
• Windows 64-bit
• Deferred Shading and Shader Model 5 or newer
• A compatible C++ toolchain when packaging the source plugin

The validated Windows configuration is DirectX 12 with Shader Model 6. Forward Shading and mobile rendering are not supported. The effect is designed for opaque deferred-rendered surfaces; translucency is not processed like opaque geometry.

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.