Blender NPR: Recreating the Genshin Impact Shader

Created on 2023-02-11T19:45:25-06:00

Cel shading to create the base effect (calculating the lighting and then using a cutoff to determine light and dark regions.)
Painting detail shadows on to the texture directly; ex. artist applied ambient occlusion.
Models do not self-shadow.
Artificial subsurface scattering for skin; shadow ramps on either edge of the cel shade's cutoff point. Usually changing the colors of these to different skin shades to simulate the hue shift on the edges of skin.
Metal is shaded with a material capture (matcap) combined with a specular shader.
Normal mapping tricks used to add surface details to clothes; ex. scales that exist only as light shimmers on top of the matcaps.