Legend of Rothan - Toon Shader

Yesterday, as is game developer tradition, I decided to spend way too much time on something completely aesthetic that doesn't involve gameplay in any way.

I think I spent about 6 hours on this. I have amplify shader graph in Unity and followed some tutorials on basic toon shaders and also ones that targeted the Breath of the Wild look. I actually made the shader from scratch more than once, trying to get down a good understanding of the concepts and what everything in the shader is doing.  This was more complex than shaders I've made before because of the custom lighting. Really, I didn't need to make a lot of changes from the tutorials, and most of my changes were just tweaking for my specific taste and the look that I wanted.

One of the challenges that I had with this shader was including normal maps. When I included them even though the shading detail was increased there would end up being a really ugly seam along UV seams, with a hard edge to the light. I'm not sure how this can be solved (I believe it would have something to do with wrapping data around the normal) and in the end decided to go without normal maps.

In the end I have a two tone shader (normal light and shadow) plus a rim light (more complicated than just a Fresnel effect, because the rim light doesn't show up around shadowed areas), and a small specular gloss for highlights. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. 

I've only applied the shader to the hero right now, but I want to apply it to all NPCs and characters in game. This shader will be a part of the coming Alpha 2 update.