Create outline renders in Blender with the free Octane Edge Tools
Lino Grandi, Otoy’s Product Manager for Octane for Blender, has released the Octane Edge Tools, a free Blender toolkit for creating outline renders in OctaneRender.
The add-on, which uses Blender’s Geometry Nodes and vertex groups to generate mesh-based outlines, is pitched as “clean, fast, and completely integrated into your workflow”.
A quick, controllable way to create anime-style and outline renders in Blender
The Octane Edge Tools make it possible to generate outline renders of Blender scenes using OctaneRender, Otoy’s GPU renderer: free to use in Blender on a single GPU.
It uses Blender’s Geometry Nodes system to generate mesh-based edges on a 3D model, then applies the OctaneRender Toon Material and Toon Light.
Users can control the thickness of the outlines generated on a global basis, on a per-object basis, or use different values for different parts of a model.
It’s also possible to choose whether outlines are rendered for individual edge loops, or even individual edges.
You can see the workflow in the video above: it looks a quick, intuitive way to create both pure outline renders for technical documentation, and anime-style toon-shaded art work.
Grandi himself has a strong track record in creating both anime-style art, and tools for creating anime-style art: you can see his animation work in his ArtStation gallery.
New native cel shading features due in Blender – but not until after Blender 5.0
Blender also has its own experimental branch for non-photorealistic rendering, created in collaboration with 3D anime firm DillonGoo studios.
However, integration into the main branch of Blender is still some way off: in a recent blog post, the Blender Foundation said that work begins after Blender 5.0 is released in November.
Price and system requirements
The Octane Edge tools for Blender are compatible with Blender 4.4.3+ and Octane 2025.2. They’re a free download.
Download Lino Grandi’s free Octane Edge tools for Blender
Read the online documentation for Octane Edge Tools for Blender
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