As soon as I saw Snowsultan's Z-Toon tutorial, I had to give it a try. Then today I began building a character, applied the technique to her, and realized that I would be needing to render her from other angles than straight on in the future...

This is a tip for SS Z-Toon: it works on all the axes: Z,X and Y. Just rotate your character and shrink the appropriate scale dial. For an angle, you'll have to get fancy with more than one scale dial.

Celes is a little cartoony valkyrie-type that is going to appear in a story a friend and I are writing. I've attached the character image profile for her.

ewww, this is a terrific render! What character did you use to build her or is she one you modeled from scratch?

Great image, and it further shows how far the Z-Toon concept can go. I totally believe this could be an important new feature for Poser users.

Ooooooooooooh now these are great!! If I didn't know better, I would NEVER have thought it to be made with Poser. Oooh Ockham... Is it possible to make one of your nifty python scripts that flattens everything FROM THE CAMERA'S POV? In other words, not necessarily the universal z-axis, but the z-axis to the camera? Or does your script do so allready? I must admit I haven't had time to try it yet :o) But I will SOON! JUAD This is such a cool technique!!!

The figure is Aiko wearing Jon Malis' Valkyrie outfit. She has no texture on save for lips and eyes and I turned the Texture on the clothing/props down to 50% and gave everything a nice object color.

This is wonderful! How did you get the clothes to fit her little waist so well!

PERFECT TIMING! Love this tutorial, and I can't say thank you enough!!!! Marque

Wow that is the best Aiko character I have ever seen.

Wow, I have to say that is one of the most creative uses I've seen for her as yet! Just want to add that it's not my exclusive character but created with Lourdes. lhiannan, I'd really love to see what you do with this! And to answer Spit's question, the clothes give a nice fit because there are three versions where necessary for all the girls, V1/2, V3, and Stephanie. So, the Stephanie morphs come in handy for Aiko as well.

Nice package, love that one. Marque

Flattening from the camera's POV in Python is not that easy - you'd have to transform every actor's mesh from local space to camera space, scale the z axis and transform it back to the actor's local space. But it isn't impossible. However, I don't think it's necessary. All that it'd take to achieve flatter shading would be bending the normals towards the camera, which is something a P5 procedural shader can do for you. Or you could lower the influence of the diffuse lighting and add ambient lighting. Or of course, you could just use P5's cartoon shader node... [attached is a Python script to replace diffuse colors with ambient colors. When using that, use the P4 renderer and check "ignore shader trees"]

OK, I just found the very easiset way to flatten things in any direction, no Python required: * reate a box prop and rotate it so that the box' Z axis points to the camera * set the box prop as parent of everything you want to be flattened * set the box' Z scaling to the desired value (e.g. 5) * make the box invisible -> everythings flat!

Hi Stewer Are you speaking of P5 or what? The virtual "Flat" Camera is the most interesting idea. Can you make this more clear for regular non-techies?

Even Better- can you explain this to SnowSultan so that another great tutorial could be created around this for everyone to follow?

Veritas777: No, stewer's approach will work in P4, also. When you rescale the parent, all its children are rescaled along those axes also. The best part of stewer's approach is that you can conform clothing and hair as you would normally.

Still thinking of animations... Would this work in animations too? What happens if a character turns around?

Works here with animation, as long as there are no keyframes on the Figure's Body node. What doesn't work so far is moving the camera.

I conformed the hair and clothes and then parented them, made it a lot easier. Haven't tried animations, but once the char is flattened I have changed poses mult times and it still works, but like stewer says you can't move the camera. Marque

Oh and once you save the toon you can bring it back in already flattened. Marque

Same toon after saving bringing it back in and posing. Marque

Hi. Lhiannan, your valkyrie looks great! You can get all kinds of interesting effects by texturing some objects and not others (like you did). :) Don't forget that adding shadows in postwork can also add a lot to the cartoon look too! Stewer, that is a very interesting idea. I'm going to bookmark this thread and experiment with it more later this week. Assuming it works and that it's OK with you, I will consider modifying the tutorial to include that tip. Thanks for improving on my screwy idea! :) Take care. SnowS

Here's an update regarding Celes... Tried out Stewer's idea for parenting everything to a cube.

Also, I found out something useful... You can conform clothing as usual, then Parent the items to your character, and then use the Z-toon way. So, Celes can now defeat whatever hordes get thrown at her in full 3d motion and look good doing it :) The only thing that remains is how to get camera movement involved, but I am NO where near even thinking about that, I'm still figuring out keyframes when it comes to animation.

The link is to a quickie gif and applied BVH. It runs SLOOOOW, I didn't bother fiddling with it, so be prepared for molasses. But, it shows the power of Z-tooning :) And I think I like her without added shadows, puts me in mind of Disney's Sleeping Beauty style.
Celes Sword-swinging http://lhiannan.tripod.com/aikovalk.gif.

Stinkin' Tripod... Cut and Paste the URL into a browser to view the GIF...

Hi lhiannan, Your link worked great in my Exp 6 brower. The animation looks fantastic! I knew if everyone started playing with SnowSultan's Z-Toon. further ideas and solutions would emerge. I am certain the static camera issue can also be solved too. Maybe in Python, maybe by some other clever idea someone has. I am sure this is all going to get alot more refined for Flash and Poser Cel Animation work and we are going to see some amazing new art and animation work out of Poser. Hope that DAZ is also paying attention as well. Also hope that more people create TOON specific characters. If people could start making Disney-style or Japanese Anime-style Toons with Poser, you can bet a LOT of people will using this technique. lhiannan's example is a terrific start!

That is amazing. :D Did you make that animation yourself or use a BVH (or whatever they're called, I can't remember)? ;) I can't wait to see more animations like this, and thanks to everyone who has suggested these sorts of ideas and improvements! SnowS

:o( Bandwidth exceeded now... :'(

Snowsultan, Thank you THANK YOU for this tutorial. I've been looking for something else in computer art, something more traditional (odd that I turn to the computer for "traditional). The animation uses a BVH, from the Medieval Motions Pak at Daz (at least, I think it's from that pak). Ernyoka, try again later... The problem with free hosting is the service is poor. :( But Free! I just checked and the site is back... For the time being.

Oh, and lhiannan's animation is not slow at all if you play it in Irfanview...looks TV-quality actually. :) SnowS

Thanks for all of the background on this thread! I just got through and realized you've mentioned plenty! I havn't located links to Aiko nor the Valkerie Pak though. I've been through Jon's Marketplace, and a search of that for Aiko, but I didn't see any Stephanie Character by the name. I do dee the BVHs at: http://secure.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=18 and http://secure.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=20 if anyone cares to know.

Attached Link: http://secure.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=1325

Odiemance, Aiko and Stephanie are DAZ characters, actually Aiko is made from Stephanie but you can get a stand-alone version if you don't want Stephanie and the Aiko add-on character, and the Valkyrie outfit by Lourdes and myself is also at DAZ.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=1348339

Thanks! Keep up the good work! Here is a link to Ockham's development of a Z-Toon Pythom for P5!

BYW - Does Zflatten spped render time much?

Thanks for the IM lhiannan. I wrote Greybro about the V2 Sword poses, as I didn't see them in his free stuff. But I ca'nt find head now tail of Danies Art poses 1 and Fyrwerks Poses 1. Anyone have any links handy, I could'nt even find Danies or Fyrwerks.

Odiemanc, I haven't seen it speed up render times. But it sure is cool.

It reminds me of that early 80's movie Heavy Metal! Anyone seen it? I was hoping it'd be quick enough for me to do something nealy as substantial.