need material help; inner glow/ edge gradiant

brianchenito

I'd like to make a material that feathers from one color at the edge of the silhouette of a mesh, to another in the center, so it looks like the inner glow effect on photoshop. I tried using a fresnel node for this, but it didnt give the results I wanted at hard edges and on planar meshes. Can anyone help?



something sort of like this

Der Hollander

I may be overthinking it, but the only solution I can think of that would just highlight the silhouette of the model would be using something like Sobel edge detection and using that as a controller?

Alternatively, you could try using a DotProduct node at varying strengths, however, since DotProduct is a component of a Fresnel function, I'm reasonably certain that it would behave in a similar fashion, computing the entire surface, rather than finding the edges and working inward.

LMP

Maybe a post-process using "Custom Depth" on the objects you want to be effected by this effect, that would be most likely to provide the effect you want. Is the image you have there what you want the end goal to look like, or is that just the effect you want on the edge?

Vailias

Another important thing in how to approach this is when and how is this effect going to be used?
Is this a temporary highlight when an object is looked at? Is this an intrinsic part of the look you're going for?

One way or another what you're looking at is going to be a screenspace effect. It *might* be doable in the object shader, but will likely require a postprocess shader since the object silhouette is related to the screen.