Outline

Shader-based mesh outline rendering system. Adds configurable color and width outlines to GameObjects by dynamically appending outline mask and fill materials to renderers. Uses pre-baked smooth normals (stored in UV3) to eliminate hard-edge artifacts on outlined meshes.

Architecture

Data Flow

Key Concepts

Concept	Description
Outline	MonoBehaviour that manages outline rendering. Dynamically adds/removes mask and fill materials from renderers on enable/disable.
SmoothNormals	Static utility that pre-computes averaged normals for shared vertices and stores them in UV3. Prevents hard edges in outlines at mesh seams.
Outline Mask	Shared material using Outline/Mask shader. Writes to stencil buffer to define the outline silhouette.
Outline Fill	Per-instance material using Outline/Fill shader. Renders the colored outline at the configured width.
Rendering Layer Filter	Renderers on the "Ignore Outline Layer" are excluded from outline rendering.
Smooth Normal Cache	SmoothNormals caches computed normals per Mesh instance to avoid redundant computation across GameObjects sharing the same mesh.

Quick Start

1. Add an outline to a GameObject

// Outline component is typically added in the Inspector
// At runtime, it starts disabled (Awake calls Disable())

var outline = gameObject.GetComponent<Outline>();
outline.SetColor(Color.green);
outline.SetWidth(3f);
outline.Enable();

2. Toggle outline visibility

// Show outline (appends materials to renderers)
outline.Enable();

// Hide outline (removes materials from renderers)
outline.Disable();

3. Exclude renderers from outlining

Set the renderer's rendering layer mask to include the "Ignore Outline Layer" in the Inspector. The outline system will skip those renderers during Bake().

Classes

Class	Description
Outline	MonoBehaviour — outline rendering with color and width control
SmoothNormals	Static utility — smooth normal baking and caching

Editor

Class	Description
OutlineEditor	Custom Inspector with live preview

See Also

• Outline Editor — custom Inspector for the Outline component