aVersionOfReality, creator of Easy Custom Normals, a Blender add-on that simplifies clean toon and cel shading, continues to develop tools for stylized 3D rendering in Blender. Their latest one, aVersion_Lines, is a complete line-art add-on for Blender 5.2 LTS' Compositor that generates line art from rendered passes.

Most line art tools analyze a model's geometry to draw lines along its edges, like Blender's Freestyle and Grease Pencil's Line Art modifier. This works well for geometry, but not for things like toon shading bands or textures. What makes this add-on unique is that it uses screen space, so it can create lines from almost any rendered data and vary their thickness, and since it doesn't rely on topology, it can also handle messy meshes more easily. It builds on the filter-based line art approach used in 2D art tools.

The add-on detects edges using depth, normals, or custom data stored in Color IDs, then uses Jump Flood with depth-priority sorting to expand and refine the lines. The developer emphasizes that it's a node pipeline, not a single effect. Geometry Nodes define IDs, thresholds, and width scales, pass them through the shader as attributes, and deliver them to the Compositor as AOVs. You can edit data at any stage and draw lines on anything you send to the Compositor.

The main drawback for now is that you need to disable regular filter anti-aliasing and use the Compositor's Anti-Aliasing node instead. The add-on also uses a lot of VRAM. At very high resolutions, systems with less than 8 GB of VRAM may spill into system RAM, which can slow things down. This may improve with future Compositor updates.

Read the FAQ and purchase aVersion_Lines by clicking this link. It's currently available with 25% off.

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