i was noticing in windwaker the toonshader has soft shadows. i am wondering if a shader has been written that does this. here is an example of what i mean, the first sphere is the current way of toon shading i see in GS, the second one is what i am trying to achieve.

Hm. I bet they do gaussian blur as a postprocess. Probably what you did in Photoshop? The trick is getting it into a shader... I need to delve deeper into shaders before I can be any help.

that could be, but it only applys to the shading, the textures need to be unchanged.

try my latest toonshader. in the fx file i have made a comment which variable to change to soften the edges

the toon shder is just a detail map .. take the toon shder formt he wiki and blur the detail map that comes with in photoshop ..