Easy Custom Normals is a Geometry Nodes-based Blender toolset for authoring clean custom vertex normals — the fix for anime and toon characters that look correct in wireframe and go blotchy the moment you light them.
Why Toon Shading Breaks
Realistic shading is forgiving. Small variations in surface normals get lost in gradients and nobody notices.
Toon shading is not forgiving. A cel shader quantises light into flat bands, so any wobble in the normals becomes a visible, hard-edged blotch. Cheeks develop patches, jaws catch shadows that make no sense, and a technically clean model reads as lumpy.
The model is usually fine. The normals are the problem — and this is why professional anime characters often have hand-authored normals that bear little relationship to the actual geometry.
What the Tool Does
The free tier provides a Laplacian Smooth plus Weighted Normals setup that smooths the normal field across the surface, cleaning up shading even on imperfect topology. Because it is Geometry Nodes, it is non-destructive — you keep adjusting rather than committing.
A paid Pro tier adds an Anime Face Proxy system, which is the technique used in production: normals are projected from a simplified proxy shape, typically a sphere, so the face shades like a smooth form regardless of its actual topology.
When You Need It
- Anime and cel-shaded characters, especially faces
- Stylised props where flat colour bands must read cleanly
- Any model where outlines behave oddly — outline width often depends on normals
When You Do Not
Realistic PBR work rarely needs custom normals. If your renders are photoreal, this solves a problem you do not have.
The Wider Point
Normals are the least understood part of stylised rendering and the most common cause of “my toon shader looks wrong.” Even if you never buy the Pro tier, understanding why face proxy normals exist will improve your stylised work more than any shader tutorial.
More in our guide to clean anime and toon shading in Blender.
Creator: Fondant · Price: Free tier + paid Pro · Get it: Gumroad
Full workflow in our guide to clean anime and toon shading, and see what PBR maps actually do for why normals matter.