Outline Only Whole Character Shader URP

Chill

Hi!
I need an outline only shader for my Spine Character in URP. I've tried your "Outline Shaders URP" example scene but i only found an outline for the components like so:

What i need though is an outline for the whole character like in the "Outline Shaders" example scene for non-URP with zWrite:

Am I doing something wrong or is that not possible in urp that easy? Thanks for any help! 🙂

Misaki

Chill It is the correct result of the outline shader for the Universal Render Pipeline project to show outlines around each part of the skeleton. As in the example scene "Outline Shaders URP", by rendering the outline behind the skeleton mesh, it can be made to look as if the outline is only outside the skeleton. If there are any problems with this approach, could you please elaborate on the problem?

Chill

Yes, thank you! I want to render the only the outline of a character and only when im behind an object with a stencil buffer. If i cannot create a full outline with the shader i might have to use a rendercamera and a rendertexture for the character, but since its costly i would like to avoid that. And since i saw it in the non URP version, i thought it might be possible somehow.

Harald

@Chill Unfortunately the Outline Shaders example scene skeleton you showed as reference is using the Spine/Outline/OutlineOnly-ZWrite shader, which requires two passes to mask the inner overlapping parts. Unfortunately, currently the Spine URP shaders don't support multiple passes yet.

We have this issue ticket here which deals with implementing support for multiple passes with the Spine URP Shaders. Unfortunately it will take some time until we get to this issue ticket, as we have more pressing matters to attend to at the moment.

Chill If i cannot create a full outline with the shader i might have to use a rendercamera and a rendertexture for the character, but since its costly i would like to avoid that.

This would be the recommended solution, at least until the above feature is implemented. Anyway, using screen space post-processing based outlines should result in superior quality, as you get none of the artifacts that are inherent with the Spine Outline shaders (due to its 8-neighbour-pixel-sampling nature, or the aliasing artifacts due to ZWrite/ZTest at inner regions).

Chill

Harald i'll go with that then, tyvm! 🙂