Attached Link: base renders and examples

Some people asked me to tell out how I did my anime poser pictures. My method is rather experimental and works with some luck, and I am working hard on it to make it easier to achieve and more generic so it can work with as many picture/render as possible. So far it often need tweakings regarding each picture and settings must be done for each case. It is also long/heavy to tell and explain, requires too many settings in Poser and too many differen,t base renders to work; the last hazard is about me using an "alien" paint software for compositing the pictures and the terminology it uses I am unfamiliar of (and in my native country). So far however my method can allow the use of textured figures (clothes, characters) within the render, but not transmapped items. Again let know that all is done using Poser4, not Poser 5 (which "shaders" could do far better); also consider that this is beginner/newbie work and requires not much skill and postwork at all, only basic operations. However there is a more simple method that gives some good results too, as long as you stick with the anime thing (no textured element), i'll try to explain this one, but note it requires some tweaking regarding the colors of initial picture. 1) What you need: - A poser scene: can only be one character, or a complex one with indoors/backdoors elements too. - Plan carefully your colors on your elements (this method needs to desaturate a lote one of the renders, so pure colors will remain same, take a unpure shade of each colors...) - The animedoll kit (obviously but not only for the character) - Saving your scene and poses in temporar folder - 3 different renders of the same scene (i explain the settings later) - A paint software abl of layer compositing using the most common operators 2) Goal / Aim of the method The aim is to cumulate the typical black outline and frank shades of a traditionnal animanga look in a render (cartoon w/ line) with the gradient shading of the flat untextured mode, giving even a single color untextured element a mixed look of both. 3) Software used I used Pixia by Tacmi Co. / Isao Maruoka for the main work, and Xnview for some little things Pixia cannot handle well. Both are free but a professionnal paint software should include all features from both. The 3 layer operators i use most/only are "highlight" (or similar name), that rise the light value of the initial picture by the value of the layer picture, "darken" (very simple one), and "Hybrid". This one is very important and i lack the knwoledge how to describe/explain it. The default operator (normal) can be set with transparency, it then compute an average value of color/light for each pixel between the two layers; Hybrid does not work this way: it "adds" the darkest elements of the layer picture over the original, and leave aside the brigthest ones. I suppose (may be wrong) it is something like the "Add" or "And" operator but i am not sure... 4) Problems of the method (both the simple one here and the complex one still WIP) What is marvellous in Poser when you use cartoon w/ line is that it will hide most bend/joint bugs on the character and cloth, which is very good because it is the most annoying problem in Poser. What is bad is that using my method, you'll see the bending/joint bugs like in clasiscal renders, because of the untextured flat render. But most people here kno how to eliminate them by postwork. The good thing is that it is easier to postwork out a bending flaw/bug in a single colored tone element than in a complex textured one like photorealistic skin texture. Enjoy ! :) 5) Getting started Make your scene, with items, background elements (not "picture") such as room wall and such, put your characters and clothes too. IF you intend to modify your light settings you should save your scene lighting as a temporary light setting. If you want (easier) to stick to default animedoll kit light settings so you don' bother with it, you would better make a dummy invisible object, parent everything to it except light (or parent all lights to it maybe), and make camera and scene rotate entirely and keep the lights static, until you have the highlights/shades desired. You will need 3 different renders of your picture. Using a toon light settings (i often use anime light 3, sometimes animelight 2 in the kit), make an usual toon render like you usually do. Keeping this setting, you'll render it too in untextured mode, without shades. Then you apply the G_Light "garage kit like" global illumination setting of the animedoll kit, and this time you render it again in untextured mode but with shades (preferred, you still can remove shades on this one). Now you have your base materials renders. The following will really depend much on the colors and shades in your picture, and your liking. Please note that starting from this point, there are many combinations possible, depending on your taste and the picture. I'll list a few here, regarding the example posted here. 6) Compositing and tweaking Please keep in mind that these are just recommandations and advices. If you are beginner just first experimetn them to understand the use of all the base render pictures we made and the workings of operators in your paint software. If you are a photoshop guru or something like that, you already know all that and will know what to do to ehance each aspect you like, and achieve the result you want. Conventions: here are the labels i'll used to name the 3 base renders for further reference. "tooned" is the toon render with your initial light setting "flat" is the unshaded flat textured render of the same light setting "gkit" is the render made using the G_light setting. A) dumbest method 1 This will work best with naked characters or scantily clad ones, but also with some cloths. Layer 1: flat (normal, opacity 100%) Layer 2: Gkit (normal, opacity 30%) Layer 3: tooned (darken, opacity 100%) Dumb isn't it ? I warned you anyway ! A2) dumbest method 2 Layer 1: Gkit (normal, opacity 100%) Layer 2: flat (highlight, opacity 30%) Layer 3: tooned (hybrid, opacity 100%) Looks darker at first, but it may be better suited in some cases. Both methods requires NO POSTWORK except layer compositing. B) Advanced steps I won't describe them sorry, because it depends too much again on your base render. I'll explain some basics instead and the basic video/color control operations used to achieve them. Ehance flat shade gradients and details, for example when your character have prominent rib cage (mayadoll/anime doll has) on her chest. You then may add more contrasts to the shaded renders, or desaturate one of them to act as a shade control on the other. If you had pure colors on your toon render, you may only want to combine the black lines of it and as few shade as possible. You'll need to desaturate it a lot, maybe even making it grey colors intead, and adjust colors so the main tones and the shade tones are very close to each other, then you can broaden/enlarge the only colors left (black outlines) to make broader lines. Brigther skin can be seen by playing with lighten and highlight layers operators. For the other things you just can adjust 3 color channels of a particular render. You can also want to clone/duplicate some of the base renders to be used for different purpose. You can use more than 3 layers, with unmodified base renders or color modified ones and various operators. I still did not finish experimenting with it myself (because i am a beginner and not a photoshop expert). I just gave you the basis. Useful filters are for example soften or sharpen but not only. Remeber you can also work again on the final picture separately like you would on any other picture, instead of getting stuck with layers and base renders. The only important thing about this is that you do not need ANY SKILL at all, just base renders, and play with layer operators and filters and color controls, basically, pushign buttons and sliders, and only that. So it can be used by total newbie like me :) I promise that when i have some spare time, i'll try to learn a bit more about paint software terminology and color control knowledge and i'll give out some of my methods experiment details, but right now i cannot afford the time. I hope it will help the newbies. I will maybe post this thread on the cellshading forum/website of Darkskill (the place for poser cell shading/toon artists so far) and recommend you visiting there. sorry for the looooooooong post

That's great information. You should post it here as a tutorial or submit it to Daz as well as Darkskill....many of us will have a hard time remembering where we last saw it, and it would be nice to have this information easy to find. Thank you for posting!

well i have nothing to do with DAZ; i linked this thread on darkskills forum so far, adn i just sux regarding technical words and terminology of paint softwares so far, and still need to improve the more complex method.. But meanwhile these just were tips... hope it can help

Well, I was just thinking it would be great to have it readily available to people who miss this thread and don't know about Darkskills. Whatever you decide, it is good information and I hope people interested in this (and there are quite a number) pick up on the information. :)

its great i`ll try it

Thanks Riddokun. Appreciate it. ^-^ So I guess even you couldn't get away from layering either? Hmmm... maybe Poser really can't produce such an image out-right. -_-

well, i guess that if i had poser 5, and took time to learn how worked the material room and the shaders, i could have managed to find a way to produce similar renders without postwork or other operations. being on poser 4 (no propack) leaves me very few opportunities, so i had to resort on layering. But in my newbie's point fo view, "layering" isn't postwork of artistic work at all, compared to real postwork. Every ne that can push buttons and sliders on a paint software can do layering and video/chromatic adjustment in fact you manage to get wuite good results out of maya's method. I never managed to make it work, first becasue the tutorial was scarce, and some pictures were missing (isp problem of mine regarding maya's server) plus i am not a photoshop guru and am unaware of terminology and basics of painting softwares and layerings (and i use an ALIEN software myself) if you can explain me how you get the wonderful results you got and displayed on your gallery, i would b eglad

Well, unless it says otherwise, it's straight Poser 5 renders. The material room with Crescent/stewer's material settings with a small little change by me. It's not significant enough to warrant being my own little material, I just put the main color into the Alternate Diffuse slot and make the Toon Shade materials shades of gray. That way I only have to change one color and not 2-3. Anyways, on the ones that say I did postwork (Pynk's Apron, Heavenly Clothes), all I did was basically render it out 2-3 times in 2-3 different ways (Firefly, P4 render mode and Cartoon with Line) and layered them in using... I think... "Screen" or "Overlay" with layer transparency at around 50-75%. I, too, had problems following the tutorial at some parts, and I get the pictures. ^_^ Not exactly sure what the "smoothing" part refers to...

gee.. you had problems following the tutorial ? well and i thought it was a "simplified" method compared tot he one i used in some of my previous pictures (best examples are "inner voices" and "ichigo strike erin")... btw you were wrong: it is NO tutorial, only suggestions and hints. My old method is not even stabilized at all, and realyl depend on the base scene you render in poser, the simplified too. BTW the latest pictures i made (the DOA character ones.. well kasumi not posted yet, you know, limit of 1 upload a day on rosity)involve an even more simple method, but requires a little cheating and postwork, but nothing beyond the reach of a total newbie/beginner (I can tell, because I AM a beginner myself... believe me. Cannot even draw with a mouse or a pencil...) anyway i put here the tiny version of kasumi until i post the real one on gallery

That's terrific work!

I can't do much drawing with a mouse, but I can manipulate a pencil fairly well. Can never get enough Kasumi. ^^ I've been working on Taruru's fighter costume suits for Anime Doll. I think with my body magnets and a couple of suit adjustments... hmmm... hey... ^^ Catch ya later, idea struck me just now. Check CelShade Artists.

gee, i would like to be able to conform/use both taruru's doa suits (ayane and kasumi), you say you are trying that ? I am glad... Anyway i checked cellshading artist and saw nothing related to this. Can you point me the link ? right now i am trying to do lisa, challenging because as i feared, dark/brown skinned characters are very difficult to handle with my layering method (you could have figured out), but i already did a similar work for a girl i know who is dark skinned too (an avatar for her in forums), so i'll have at least one thing to base my work... maybe i'll be lazy and sshift instead to underlooked Hitomi first :)

"Underlooked"?!? ^_^ Hehehe... you haven't seen the Neotaku DOA forums, huh. Anyways, the link is forthcoming... I fell asleep in the middle of my magnet fetish with that suit. It was nice until I actually posed her... that's when it all fell apart and I abandoned that project and am now working (currently as I type this) on another that'll be on Renderotica and CelShade. Give me a few... still setting up the materials and such for the... ummm... uniforms.

a "stable" tutorial at least for black outlines is available at my website.. still trying to stabilize/perfect my "skin shading" method too...