Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=987136

How closely would you say the image at the attached link approaches a real Anime/Cartoon look & feel? Please be as critical as possible: I can't improve my method otherwise!

Thanks!

Message edited on: 06/25/2005 01:29

I would try and make the shadows look more drawn looking.

I think it looks great!!!!!! Love esther

That looks awesome. I would make the clothing default color a lot darker to wash out the texture map of the blouse so that it is mostly just transmap. The photobase of the top is a bit conflicting with the cell look of the figure. I never did toons much and it is fun I must admit. I would love to know about all the different methods people use to do their toon images.

The good news: I think your render is attractive and decorative, very nice-looking, without reference to any conventional or commercial style. It can stand on its own style if need be. The bad news: if we try to compare it to conventional or commercially-popular styles, it doesn't compare well. The figure's skin is too washed-out to see if good color zones were developed. However, the shading doesn't look adequate, and the colour zones look very machine-generated and uneven, compared to commercial anime film style. Snowsultan's z-toon technique flattens the figure, thus largely eliminating the possibility of depth and color-shading without precise and non-intuitive postwork. Perhaps "D-toon" is analogous to that, but I don't use D|S, so I don't know. Most of the lines don't show any trace of human intervention, so I guess that is the big area where postwork is needed. You'd want to redo them all so they're smooth and professional-looking. Learning how to do the inking on these things may be the hardest part of it. If "D-toon" is similar to "z-toon" (flattening the figure in the Poser z-direction, using an invisible parent prop), then that leads to a monotone cartoon effect, which is good for Sunday comics or old-style American comic books, but not good for anime. Add to that the heavily-textured apparel, and it's an entirely different look compared to anime style.

I'm cool with the clothes being "real" and the figure being toon if the clothes are "flat", then the result looks kind of collage-ish. The outlining is great, how is it done? I think the skin and skin shadoe would look better colored. How I do this is by compositing the a "texture" mode preview window image over the toon to give the color. One way is to put the "toon" in darken Mode over the "texture" image... or the texture image on top of the toon and set to hue, color, or mutiply. I also do this whole number by compositing a flatoutline preview over a texture preview. Still I don't get nice outling like you got. I would make the background a flat color if it isn't actual stuff like a room setting or something. But I would stay clear of gradients etc.

I've experimented with many techniques, and nothing that I've come up with can give a traditional anime look without any postwork. Like Mateo said, outlines, vibrant solid colors, and hard shading are essential to the 'real' anime style, and these are often difficult to duplicate in 3D. Poser 5 shaders can help you render a good start, but the shading almost always needs touchup work in a paint program. My D-Toon method doesn't flatten the figure along the Z axis because DAZ Studio scales in a different way from Poser and Z-tooning won't work. :( You might want to try Inkulator, a free program at http://inkulator.sourceforge.net/ that's quite interesting. It lets you split the render into three separate images, which you can then assemble using blending modes in your paint program for nice results. I think your image is very good though, and don't give up! :) SnowS

Where can the D-toon tutorial be found?

D-Toon tutorial can be found in the Tutorials section here on Renderosity. If it's not still on the first page for some reason, check the DAZ Studio tutorial section then (it's the only D|S-specific one in there, haha). Anton, is that render from P5 or 6? I can't figure out exactly how you got that eyebrow border, I sure don't know how it can be done with P4, but you have a knack for making Poser do things it's not supposed to. ;) SnowS

Poser4 render with normal lighting. The brows are a texture/trans for Apollo Eyebrow plane. I have a whole bunch of browtrans in different styles. You can make the brows any color.

Oh, so the border was painted around the edges? OK, when I read you were using ambient color, I figured it was something complicated. :)

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=989974

I postworked many of the lines to make them look more even.
I also tried making the shadows more drawn (I hope I did a decent job of it).
I "toonified" the clothing
I gave the characters less pale textures, etc.

Message edited on: 06/28/2005 20:24

Message edited on: 06/28/2005 20:26