i am considering maybe upgrading from partist to p6 though i have different criterias that matter in such choice( such as OS required for example) i heard from efrontier website that poser6 offered a different "new" ehanced version of toon rendering, saw just a sample but it wasnt enough downloaded the demo of p6, and couldnt really find it or how to fine tune it (i'm a waste at shader, never used p5 as i said) can someone 1) points me to more various examples of pictures made using this feature (no postwork or things that could be done in p4, or p5 material/shader, but exclusive to p6) 2) explain a bit how it works different/better compared to older versiosn of poser (4 and 5 - with shaders) 3) explain me what kind of parameters can be modified and the impact on the final toon render thanx a lot

Hi Riddokun :) I hope this will give you an idea. First of all you remember the toon display mode in Poser 4? There were two types, a simple toon or toon with outlne. This has now changed and you can specify one tone, two tone, three tone, and even three tone with highlight. So, in this case you just antialias, no rendering required. Now, if you render, there are many options in the material room. You can use the standard toon node (it's now provided in the form of a wacro) and apply that or you can fine tune it. You can even have a textured model and add a toon node to that. Here are a few examples. All the top ones are just the display mode and only the bottom two are done with shaders. There are many more types of shaders available and I'm working on a small freebie for AniMax for Apollo Maximus right now to give him a more toony look. These are just quick renders, the toon nodes can be tweaked for even more variety. Lastly, there's also an option if you use the firefly renderer to outline your figure in either pen, pencil, marker, etc choosing the thickness too. Well, I don't use that all that much, I find even the thinnest a bit too thick for my purposes so I prefer to use the shader nodes. Hope this gives you an idea.

And here are some examples of my toon shaders.

interesting now i need to check later asap if i ever can achieve similar/equivalent looks or features (three tones, etc) through my old (and now rusted coz of lack of practice) method i used for my own pictures if i can achieve results that matches the features found in p6, it would change my decision in another way if i cannot do decent results myself out of my p4 + postwork tricks, i may have ton consider stronger anyway: 1) what is the learning curve of the shader/material room ? (i mean it's common to p5 and p6 but when i visited a friend who had p5, it looked so complex and so hard and detailed to learn about it to make it work that it would make me flee away, as i already spent much time snailing on other poser aspects already :) 2) what does p5 worth compared to p6 , i mean what would make someone choosing the second in favor or the older one ? i mean ok the featurees described in site, but i mean regarding basic hobbyist and possibly one who mostly aim at toon/anime characters rendering (in cellshading or cg shaded mobe either) i know p5 was kinda buggy but i was told it could reach a decent state with sr4, to which extent though ? is poser 6 much more stable ? i ask this cause i only have w98, and i wonder if i ever need to finally take the jump from poser artist to p5/p6 for the better library/runtime handling, firefly stuff polygon smoothin) and maybe material room, but i have to consider 2 options: A) P5 (if i still can find som eplace to purchase it ) at a decent price B) P6 upgrade from P4 (120?) PLUS a W2000/Win Xp, both cumulated price (depend on where i can purchase w2000/xp cheap) and i then have to compare p5 price best i can find, with p6 upgrade + win 2k/xp os considering stability issue too regarding p5 sr 4 compared to p6 thanx for your help earlier, and possibly further i dunt have much money so i really have to make my chose very wisely

Excellent work on the toon tutorial, Kalypso. You have covered the P5/P6 methods very well. My hope is for some technique that does stronger inking or line-work, i.e. lines that appear to have been drawn by an artist who is experienced in drawing panels in comic books.

Unfortunately, I've scoured the web extensively, and experimented a lot on Poser 6, but I do not know of any way to approximate professionally drawn comic book art from Poser 6 renders without performing significant postwork.

Some tooning methods don't draw lines at all (e.g. Z-toon). Others draw some lines, but not all, and some others draw all the lines, but unevenly (e.g D-Toon). Others don't handle transparencies and textures at all (e.g. Poser 6's Cartoon with Line display mode). Some methods are so highly dependent upon strategic lighting that they have the uncanny knack of "overdarkening" portions of the picture that don't receive enough light, thus increasing postwork time, etc.

This information needs to be in a FAQ. :)

Message edited on: 08/18/2005 20:26

I agree, junk. A FAQ would be good. But it's largely a negative FAQ. After a decade of Poser versions, it still can't do professional-looking toons, no matter what we try. We can get some interesting results that look good on their own, but there's always some glitch in the color zones or the weak lines, always something that gives it away as a Poser render.