During the development of the demo, I started redesigning parts of the rendering pipeline to better support stylized visuals, anime-inspired effects and advanced VFX workflows.
Shader Archetypes
One of the biggest rendering changes introduced during the development of Knitewings is the new "Shader Archetype" system inside S2Engine.
Instead of treating all materials the same way, materials are now grouped into dedicated rendering archetypes.
Each archetype is rendered in a different stage of the pipeline depending on its visual purpose.
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PBR Archetype
The PBR archetype uses the traditional deferred rendering pipeline and is mainly used for environments, props and physically-based lighting.
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TOON Archetype
The TOON archetype uses a dedicated rendering path designed specifically for cel-shaded characters and stylized lighting.
This separation allows me to independently control the visual language of characters without affecting the rest of the scene.
Both PBR and TOON materials coexist within the same rendering framework, allowing realistic environments and stylized characters to interact naturally with the same lighting and shadowing systems.
This approach avoids the visual disconnect often seen when toon-shaded characters are rendered through a completely separate pipeline.
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EMIT Archetype
The EMIT archetype is rendered during the emissive rendering pass and is designed for energy effects, magical attacks, animated glows, weapon effects and advanced VFX.
This system is currently being used extensively in Knitewings to redesign weapons and improve the readability and visual progression of attacks.
Another important aspect of the Shader Archetype system is that each archetype exposes its own dedicated parameter set.
Instead of forcing every material to share the same huge collection of options, each rendering model only exposes the parameters that actually make sense for that specific archetype.
For example:
- PBR materials focus on physically-based surface properties
- TOON materials expose stylized shading controls
- EMIT materials provide parameters for animated emissive effects, scrolling masks, fresnel glow, distortion, pulse animations and energy-based VFX
This makes the workflow cleaner, easier to expand and much more scalable compared to a single monolithic shader trying to handle every rendering scenario at once.
It also allows S2Engine to evolve different rendering styles independently without increasing shader complexity exponentially.
This architecture makes it easier to evolve S2Engine toward both photorealistic and stylized rendering without forcing all materials into the same rendering model.
Knitewings is becoming more than just a game for me.
It’s also helping shape the future direction of S2Engine.
Shader Archetypes are just one piece of a much larger picture.
After the release of Knitewings, I plan to dedicate significant attention to the future of S2Engine and its ecosystem. The coming years will bring some of the most ambitious changes since the engine was first introduced.
Stay tuned,
Fabio
