I am feeling my way towards a style and workflow for something in-between smooth-tone anime and realistic. This is for animation. I am looking at Miki, EJ, Aiko and MayaDoll and am interested also in Satoko. (i have a problem with MayaDoll because of the weird license provision of no commercial use unless you are an individual)

I think what I want is Poser6 Preview rendering, engaging the OpenGL engine, with "Cartoon Tones" set to "Smooth Tones". This is intensely fast, literally 2 seconds per frame with four figures in it, 8 seconds if you anti-alias.

What I am looking for is something between/similar to these two styles:

Graduated smooth shade within cels, well defined thin-ish lines, as seen on clothing and furniture here:
http://moe2.homelinux.net/src/200504/20050413809120.jpg
and
Aiko with realism dial set to 1, Bishoujo by Firebirdz at RDNA:
http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=2109

Here are my newbie beliefs, please correct if wrong.

1. No material room shaders respected with preview mode render
2. No textures respected with preview mode render
3. I could turn on a texture for a body part such as eyelash, but then I'd have to render firefly, right?

My big questions are:
X) How do I manage the eyelashes? I've got to get rid of those large 'place holder' things, but still have some sort of line for lashes. EJ has dials to send lashes to zero or minus, but it still does not look good. The others have few controls over it.
Z) How do I develop better lines, like wrinkles on faces or folds on clothes?

I am aware of:
a) As pointed out by stewar and others, there is a "toon" shader in the material room, but you have to render firefly and so far I have not been able to force it to help improve the lines. It DOES give the colored shading, so you just leave out textures, that is a pretty fast render.
b) there is a post-processing 'toon line creator', but that is firefly, and so far not such hot results for me.
b) Olivier over at RDNA is about to release a set of toon shaders
c) An upper stratosphere solution might be 3DSMax with FinalToon plugin

Any insight, especially about the eyelashes, would be welcome. Thank you

::::: Opera :::::

use an eyelash.cr2 file or an eyelash prop. as to http://moe2.homelinux.net/src/200504/20050413809120.jpg there is currently no way to get halfway there in Poser. you'll need an human artist with a pencil or tablet if you want lines like that. as it now stands, you'll be able to get about 10 or 20% there, albeit with alot of postwork. however, I see no problem with GI or HDRI renders like the other link in your post. if the public is forced to view enough high-quality 3D renders, eventually they'll become acclimated to them and come to prefer them over cartoons drawn by humans. it may take another decade or two, but the time may come sooner than that.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2528840

NOTE: in the attached thread, Berserga points to AnimeDoll in post 15 and an eye trick.

Are AnimeDoll and MayaDoll the same thing?

::::: Opera :::::

Message edited on: 01/07/2006 14:18

Attached Link: http://www.finalrender.com/products/products.php?UD=10-7888-35-788&PID=37

Miss Nancy,

I suspected that the toon renders with great lines would all be found to be hand drawn. What about this tool? (attached link) I drilled down into the info on FinalToon to discover that you can get firm lines, but then you can back in noise and even DOF in the lines.

On the other hand...
There is just 'something' about these AikoRealistic renders that interest me. There is enough "toon" left in so the viewer clearly receives the signal that this is not pretending to realism from the get-go, yet the pleasing gradients and other elements from the realism side pack a wallop.

::::: Opera :::::

Message edited on: 01/07/2006 14:22

IIRC, animedoll is something one buys to augment mayadoll. however, aiko3 is better for this IMVHO. I think that http://www.finalrender.com/products/products.php?UD=10-7888-35-788&PID=37 looks very good. it's at least as good as NPR or the toon plug-in for carrara. just forget about using poser for this, until somebody can fix it up right. they've had more than 10 years now, and they're slowly getting there, so there's always hope. as to the eyes, if you want toon renders in poser, just use one of the many no-eyeballs morphs, which move the cornea back into the head. or, in a renderer other than poser, simply delete the eyeball material.

If you're going for the anime look, I'd go for Anime Doll and/or Aiko 3 figure-wise. Snow Sultan has a really good tutorial for doing cell shading using D|S if you're interested: http://www.daz3d.com/support/tutorial/index.php?id=1502 You can mix and match the materials so you have transparency where you need it, such as the eyelashes, and have more of a cel-shaded look elsewhere. Hope this helps, Cres

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/gallery.ez?ByArtist=Y&Artist=DarkSkills

Check this guys technique. ALL done in poser :-)

that cel-shader guy has done some excellent work IMVHO, although one can see the jagged artifacts that result from the interaction of the polygon edges with that shading method. one can do even better using the various toon shaders as supplied by Crescent, trekkie girl, compiler and stewer, as these allow control of the colour zones and some control over the lines (inking).

Crescent, this is a specific request for a link to your shaders, so it's not 'spaming.' Please provide. I've looked for them, can't find them. You too stewar or anyone else if you see this. And yes jjsemp as stated in my first post I am aware of the pending product at RDNA. Wolf, great link. DarkSkills not only seems to have control over the technical aspects of two-toned cel-shading, but he has a fine sense of pose, frozen action and composition. Thanks. :: og ::

EYELASHES:

[in D|s] You can mix and match the materials so you have transparency where you need it, such as the eyelashes, and have more of a cel-shaded look elsewhere. <<

But you can do this in Poser also, right?

Let me try to crack through my fuzzy brain on this subject.

Hypothetical:
I want to make the preview to look like the desired end product, so I can render with preview mode, WYSIWYG.

So, I set the scene's document display style to "cartoon with line." I set the Cartoon Tones to "Smooth Tones". I tint the groups as needed with the bucket.

I have applied NO textures to the character. And no shaders in the material room.

Let's say I am happy with everything except the eyelashes. Above, Nancy says to apply an eyelash prop. Am I then changing the display mode for the eyelash prop to "smooth shaded" and does that prop need/have a texture, and/or does the prop look good in preview mode? Where does one get an eyelash prop? Will this application of an eyelash prop hide/obliterate the mesh to which the eyelash is attached (see image above)? Note: the model in the image is EJ. You can see all the eyelash morphs. The "lash mesh" can be hidden using these dials, but I want eyelashes on my toon render.

Sorry to be so primitive on this, I just need to conquer this issue by brute force because I have a thick, dense head about it. I'll make a freebie tutorial if I can get this idea to work.

::::: Opera :::::

Have you considered using "Madoka" here in the renderosity freestuff? Madoka is an Animedoll/Aiko 3 hybrid with Animedoll's head (which doesn't have the eyelash problem) and Aiko3's body. Unfortunately, "Madoka" isn't flawless: her upper neck region is somewhat distorted where it joins with the head - you may need to hide this. Alternately, one can use Himeko, available here in the Renderosity marketplace. Himeko's bodyshape is very similar to Aiko's (she can fit in Aiko's clothes with some tweaking), and she doesn't have any eyelash problems. However her facial morphs are VERY limited.

Crescent's Poser 5 Materials

Possibly also of interest Anime Doll Pop Tops

Such a pity Ockhams Z-flatten or Z-Toon script doesn't work well with animating... I quite like the look of it but I've never been able to produce anything but stills with it!!! I fired up max and finaltoon and I think I need to bite the bullet and buy BodyStudio as I really don't enjoy getting poser figures into max with all the material tweaking involved!! Here's an Aiko 3 Realistic character z-tooned!! If I don't get too sleepy I'll try to get it into max and render with final toon!!! Gerard

face shot...

Max & FinalToon default settings

Max & FinalToon cel setting with brush size lowered and omni light affecting ambient only. Kinda similar to Z-toon in Poser.... p.s. eyelashes suck in Max & Poser combos too!!! :)

Attached Link: http://www.appleseedthemovie.com/

Check out the movie Appleseed... 3D CGI & Cel Shading!! It's very cool and very well done! Gerard

ghelmer, First of all, thank you for pursuing the Max/Final Toon solution, that must have taken some "getting into" time. This shows promise. You can obviously get strong lines with graduated cell shading, like on the hair in both 15 and 16 above, although purist toon artists will still say "not as good as hand-drawn" and I'd agree. And between the two images, you can see a range between flat shading and graduated shading within cels. Image 16, I would say however, does not demonstrate strong toon lines. But I would imagine, with time, you could work into a good solution. Thanks again. I am putting this solution firmly in my back pocket (where it is scaring the hell out of my wallet!) In Appleseed, a few of the human characters had traditional two-toned flat cel shade, but in many places the blend zone was nicely blurred. That represents the meeting of two worlds, and yields a positive result. You know it is toon, but the shading imputes a 3D presence. I wonder what their tools were? Maybe Max/FinalToon! [Note: their site and trailer have totally locked down controls for sound. No-No-No!] Thanks for the link! The z-flattened AikoRealism images...now that's yet another direction! This paradigm is basically taking straight realism and backing in a visual cue that it is toon. More on that in my next post. ::::: Opera :::::

I spent some time watching Nickelodeon yesterday. The default animation style is: Matte painted backgrounds and foregrounds in watercolor (graduated shading), with the animated characters strictly in two-tone flat shaded. However, I spotted another trend, which is basically an upgrade from South Park Style. On the new show "6teen," they use "cels" but with no border lines at all; the color boundaries of props are the 'lines'. The feature demarcation of mouth, eyes, eyebrows and ears are highly minimalist solid lines. But....the tinting of SOME of the 'cels' was graduated shading. The audio dialoge and emotive animation was top notch. Interesting and effective. ::::: Opera :::::

with regard to Anime Doll Pop Tops and Madoka and by extension the use of A3 as my base model... The only thing stopping me is the dreaded Mil Figure problems with shoulder and arms. I am headed into a session with A3 over the next few days and will try on this idea. nruddock, thanks for the link to Crescent's shaders. ::: og :::

Wolf, you are a big Carrara advocate... Have you used the toon plugin Nancy is referring to, and what is your opinion? ::::: Opera :::::

I checked out the appleseed promo - impressive work. reminds me a bit of this series I was just watching, called gravion zwei. now, instead of hiring a studio of 100 korean cartoon artists and auxiliary personnel to animate their movie, they can hire a studio of 100 korean max or lightwave operators and auxiliary personnel. it might speed things up a bit or allow more special fx, but I have a feeling it's going to be even more expensive to pay all those guys' salaries, software costs, render farm fees, etc. however, the advantage to using human artists is that they have actually studied human dynamics, facial expressions, etc. and they have a great deal of empathy with their subjects. this is not the case with computer operators tied to their consoles 24/7 without any useful real-world life experience. their lack of experience with live humans means that they will not know how to animate a girl laughing or crying, and they will not know how to animate the various ways a girl can walk across a room. in short, every thing they do will be derivative of some other movie they saw, or some bvh file they downloaded, or some figure they bought at turbosquid or one of the higher-priced vendors in an effort to pad their expense accounts.

WOW! Good morning NANCY! I'll just say two things in agreement. 1) My son is graduating highschool, and wants to be a game designer. Not programmmer...charcter/level/game designer. In this culture, there is little incentive to draw anything. He has encounterd a fine teacher in senior year high who has started him drawing however. I told him "look for a college that teaches you life drawing before 3DSMax." He found it, Westwood College here in Los Angeles. We spoke to the dean of that program to ask what software they use. "Well, the game he will design to get his Bachelor's Degree will be in 3DSMax, but for most of the time, when storyboarding and brainstorming, we just pass around sketches." 2) "The Animator's Survival Kit" by Richard Williams. ::::: Opera :::::

bookmark What is this "Aikorealistic" ya'll are talking about

Message edited on: 01/09/2006 10:32