14. Output and Shaders¶
Your painted channels can drive different shader groups. Use standard PBR, one of the six shaders we ship, or your own group to match the look of your game or workflow (toon, hand-painted, material blending, your studio's custom stuff etc.).
Choosing a shader¶
Open Shaders in the main OP Painter panel, beside UDIM, and click a shader to add it to the Output menu. Choose it there to use it on the material. Open Inspector to adjust its settings in the Shader Inspector, above the Node Inspector.
| Shader | What it is useful for |
|---|---|
| Toon | Cel shading with light and shadow bands, highlights, rim light and an adjustable outline. EEVEE only. |
| Comic | Toon shading with halftone ink dots and an outline. EEVEE only. |
| Unlit | Hand-painted and stylised looks without scene lighting, with optional outline. EEVEE and Cycles. |
| Matcap | Previewing painted colour and surface detail under matcap lighting. EEVEE and Cycles. |
| Glass | Tinted or frosted glass with paintable opaque areas. Best in Cycles; EEVEE needs raytracing and has refraction limits. |
| MaterialBlend | A base material plus up to six more materials, blended with painted RGB masks, height blending and raised edges. EEVEE and Cycles. |
The Shader Inspector shows the shader's controls and which painted channels feed its inputs. Available map inputs also let you load textures directly, useful for MaterialBlend's material textures. Toon, Comic and Unlit include their own outline controls.
Use your own shader groups¶
Build your shader group in Blender, expose the inputs you need, then add it to Overpaint's library as a node-group asset named shader_…. Pick it with Shaders, just like the shipped ones (for a game match, keep its lighting and colour management in mind too).
Overpaint connects painted channels to matching shader inputs, such as Color to Base Color and Roughness to Roughness. Expose the controls you want to adjust as group inputs; they appear in the Shader Inspector.
For masks or other custom data, register a folder in OP Settings ▸ Custom Output Setup ▸ Custom Folder with Add to Output List. In its row, choose the Shader and Input it should feed. For example, connect a folder named Mask 1 to MaterialBlend's Mask 1 input: its red, green and blue channels control three material layers. A second mask can control three more. Save a mapping as a preset to reuse it.
Choosing what the material shows¶
The Output menu switches between BSDF Output for standard PBR, your picked shaders, individual visible channels shown without lighting, and registered custom outputs. Use a single-channel view to inspect a mask or roughness map, then switch back to your shader to judge the result. None (disconnect) disconnects the material output.
Channels and their standard PBR connections are covered in chapter 6; the Custom Output Setup controls are in the OP Settings chapter.