Sakuga Toon Shader Cycles & Eevee

Sakuga Toon Shader Cycles & Eevee gives Blender a toon-shading workflow that skips UV mapping and stays procedural. The shader can be dropped onto a 3D model, then adjusted through lighting and shader controls, with support for both Cycles GPU rendering and Eevee.

Place the shader on the model, then shape the lighting

The setup is direct: apply the shader, adjust the lighting, and tune the result to fit the model. No UV mapping is needed, which keeps the process centered on shading rather than texture preparation.

That keeps the collection easy to work into an existing scene. The main controls stay inside Blender’s material setup, and the shader behavior remains procedural instead of depending on baked texture steps. For toon work, that means the look can be steered through the node setup and the light arrangement rather than through separate UV work.

Choose between Metallic and Point Light behavior

Each shader includes two lighting variations. Metallic Lighting follows the camera when the object or camera moves, creating a glossy metallic look. Point Light follows a designated object you select, giving the standard toon-shader lighting behavior.

The two modes serve different kinds of shots. Metallic keeps the highlight response linked to camera movement, while Point Light holds the lighting relationship to a chosen object. The collection also includes a deconstructed version for better customization, which gives more room to adjust the shader structure instead of relying only on the finished look.

Layer in rims, outlines, paint textures, and flares

The shader set goes beyond the base toon surface. Rimlights and outlines can push the silhouette, while additional lighting options shape the surface response. Paint textures, shader masks, and flares add more control over the final look, and the included monkey demo scene gives a ready setup for checking how the pieces behave together.

The package includes 4 rimlights, 10 outlines, 3 different paint textures, 17 flares, and 3 shader masks. Lineart for Shader Editor is included for Cycles, which adds another tool for edge treatment in that render path. The collection also presents multiple shader styles with different lighting variations, so the same material family can move toward different toon directions without rebuilding the setup from scratch.

Keep Cycles settings in mind before rendering

The development focus is primarily on Cycles, and the practical limitations matter when the shader is used in production. GPU rendering in Cycles is not supported with OptiX, so Cycles Render Devices needs to be set to "None" to enable GPU rendering. That detail shapes how the shader should be prepared before a final render.

Eevee support is present, but some features do not behave as expected there. One example is that the shaders currently cannot receive cast shadow from other objects. That makes Cycles the safer place to validate shading behavior first, especially when the shot depends on shadow response or on the way the lighting reacts to motion.

Updates added shadow catching and new shader pieces

Version 2.0 added shadow catching. With the Blender 3.5 update, the shaders also integrate OSL scripts, which brings GPU rendering with Cycles into the workflow and opens up more room for experimentation. The update also added a Lineart Shader for Shader Editor, Light Decay, Impact Shader, Paint Shader 1, and Paint Shader 2.

Version 1.1 added Caustic Shader, Nebula Shader, Point Light Mask, Edge Mask, and Flares. Those additions fit the same workflow: start with a toon base, then layer in edge treatment, lighting control, and surface accents where the shot needs them. In practice, the collection sits well in a Blender scene where toon styling, procedural control, and Cycles-first rendering all need to stay in the same material setup.

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