A friend of mine is working on a retro-gaming RPG project and asked me if I could render some character pictures in a cartoon style. I've seen it done within Poser and I've even seen someone do it with VSS somewhere in some thread.  I have not a clue how to do this but I'd like the learning experience, so could we have a discussion about cartoon rendering within Poser?

 There was a bit of discussion on cartoon shading in the humongous VSS Skin Test thread starting on page 79 or 80:

VSS Cartoon Discussion.

But I think it's a good a to start a new thread about toon shading in Poser.  I haven't been able to find a good method for toon shading without using texture maps so I'll be watching this thread closely.

I'd prefer to use texture maps as the base. I have a good anime type skin texture for M4 that came from the Marketplace. When rendered, it's style reminds me of some of the new Final Fantasy character cut scenes. I'll check out your bookmark, but yes, I think there needs to be a thread for this so I've started it.

Vestmann, you didn't happen to have saved your VSS3 Toon prop setup? I'm not getting the same results.  My girl is rendering like a giant 100 watt light bulb.

So Vestmann showed how to do it, and in fact it's quite trivial to put any kind of shaders into the templates and have VSS apply them.

The real question is - what sort of shader? Turning any shader into a template is pretty easy. If there is a particular toon style shader you already have or know about, then we can get started.

Otherwise, first we have to decide what the shader should do, exactly.

Since this is all new to me, I have no idea, BB. I don't know if you are familiar with video games or retro RPGs that resemble Final Fantasy 2 or 3. What I probably am doing for the project is just head shots for the character stats screens in the game. Maybe some full body shots. Not sure at the moment. I just wanted to familiarize myself with this technique of Poser rendering since I've never done it before.

Sorry, have to run some errands. I'll be back soon to check this thread.

Quote - Vestmann, you didn't happen to have saved your VSS3 Toon prop setup? I'm not getting the same results.  My girl is rendering like a giant 100 watt light bulb.

Try again with a single light at low intensity.  One of the thing I'm not comfortable with when it comes to toon shading is lighting.  It seems that toon shaders need very little light.  Anyway, try changing the lighting before doubting your setup.

this is good. it's the first time in recent memory when OP posted an example of desired toon style.
I can see how the artist did it.  I dunno how to do it in poser.  the line work alone requires
specifications for each material of each posersurface, and for variations in line width according to
edge lighting and location.  in addition, the artist rendered cast shadows in some areas, but skipped
them in other areas (artistic licence).

Great observations, MN. Usually I just whip out a material approximating what I see, but this style is very complex.

Some of it I'm not going to be able to manage. Poser nodes limit the data that a shader has access too.

This was only one example image of style. I can find others. I saw a demo video last night of another game on Big Fish that is in the same style as my friend wants to do (I believe the game was made with the same game engine that my friend wants to use). There was a quick screen shot in the video of the character page within the game.

To Vestmann, I will first try a lower light setting. As you say, obviously toon render utilizes different light approaches than I am used to working with.

Quote - This was only one example image of style. I can find others. I saw a demo video last night of another game on Big Fish that is in the same style as my friend wants to do (I believe the game was made with the same game engine that my friend wants to use). There was a quick screen shot in the video of the character page within the game.

To Vestmann, I will first try a lower light setting. As you say, obviously toon render utilizes different light approaches than I am used to working with.

Ok. Let us know how that goes.  If you have problems I'll see if I can dig up my old setup.

I have a good feeling about this thread :)

We need a 2D edge-detect node and there's no way to do it. Everything in the node system is 3D.

I have some ideas for the shading - some of it seen here. But the lines seem impossible.

This subject interests me so here's a question I have.  Creating cartoons requires 2 things: shaders and lines.  Assuming shaders aren't going to be a problem, how good is poser's ability to create the lines properly?

EDIT: I started writing before bill posted.  :

Quote -
We need a 2D edge-detect node and there's no way to do it. Everything in the node system is 3D.

Okay forgive me but this sparked a really dumb question.  We've seen that you can create an object with just poser.  Like the loop making script.  Would it be possible to create a 2D object that could be a fake stand-in for the edge?  If so, just plug black into its ambient channel.

That might be possible for a still image, but not animation. Hmmm.

olivier sells shaders that do the simple edge-blend and possibly the directional edge-blend
(very difficult IMVHO).  the simple edge-blend is better than the poser toon outline, but I don't
own the shader set, hence I can't do demo renders of it.

in poser, the 3-d to 2-d technique is called z-tooning or z-flattening (snow sultan).

Quote - So, I've always thought and still think there is no hope of doing proper toon lines in Poser. The only thing that sort of works is an Edge_Blend with a threshold, but that doesn't do the right thing all the time. Sometimes, no line shows, and sometimes you get much more than a line.

We need a 2D edge-detect node and there's no way to do it. Everything in the node system is 3D.

I have some ideas for the shading - some of it seen here. But the lines seem impossible.

can you give us that shader above? I love the style.

Here it is. Remove the .txt - it is a material file.

thanks mate :)

For what I'm doing, I'm not necessarily sure I need the cartoon outline. I like the look of it better without the lines. Thank you so much for the material file, I'll do some playing around with that!

You're welcome.

The lines are adjustable and can be turned off.

There are a few parameters on the left to make it easy to adjust.

I'll show some examples.

Setting Toony = 0 produces normal diffuse reflection.

I increased it to .6 here to get a softer transition.

If you want to use a texture, set it to white and connect an image map node to it like this.

I screen captured your demonstrations for more detailed study offline. Thank you so much!

 Thank you very much for this bagginsbill.

Hi,
  I am working on a project that requires the lines.
Miss Nancy those are very nice.
Did you get them with BB's material?
BB hope to see more on this.
cheerio
lululee

BB,
Could you use just the line part on your  VSS shader?
cheerio
lululee

I don't know how MN did that. When I use Edge_Blend on Andy, I don't get consistent line widths like that. Sometimes nothing, and sometimes a big black area (not a line) is produced.

An edge that doesn't point away from the camera is not detected.

An area that points away from the camera but is not an edge (like a sloped shoulder) can trigger the black.

I don't know if Olivier found a better scheme of some sort. His examples always look good, but maybe he carefully selected his examples and didn't publish any of the failures. I publish the failures, and if I can't eliminate them, I don't stand behind the shader and don't want people to use it.

You did see this, right? It's crap.

lulu, I didn't use bill's edge-blend shader.  to do this in photoshop is somewhat counter-intuitive
and complex (e.g. the initial edge-blend render has no lines anywhere, one has to be familiar
with high-pass filter and level adjustment in photoshop), but it satisfies the cartoonist's desire
to have the linework in a separate layer.  that's why i would recommend either bill's or olivier's
shader instead.

BB,
I understand your integrity with quality.

Miss Nancy,
I have Oliver's shaders. I have not yet produced the kind of render I am looking for when I use my own textures.
  I guess it's back to the drawing board unless BB hits the quality he is known for.
cheerio
lululee

BB,
In your material is there a way I can make the lines brown instead of black?
I do think there is potential for this shader.
cheerio
lululee

Also, I added a parameter to control how much darker the toon shaded shadow color is versus the standard color. This is PM:Shadow Multiple. Lower numbers will make it darker.

I also added a pre-connected empty color map. If you don't need a map, leave it blank and just use the PMC:Color chip. You can use both as well - a map will be multiplied with the color chip value. This is called a "tint" operation, and works the same in my VSS skin shader.

Because this has a properly named empty color map, it is now ready to use as a VSS template shader. Enjoy.

WOW!
Thanks so much BB.
Much appreciated.
I'm off to play with it.
cheerio
lululee

Here's an example where I used a dark green line. It helps hide the flawed areas. Makes it look like another toon shade instead of a mistake.

Oh, forgot to say, I'm rendering with render GC. You're going to get very different results without GC. Do you want a version with shader GC built in?

I have a cool new technique, by the way, that I haven't published yet. I figured out a way to make shader GC automatically turn itself off, without you having to touch anything, when render GC is enabled. Isn't that cool? You can use the same material with or without render GC and don't have to do anything different. This solves a big problem for me as I was making GC and non-GC versions of everything for my book. But now I can make just one version of any shader for all cases!

 That's clever!  Will you make a new revision for VSS Skin with this new technique?

Quote -  That's clever!  Will you make a new revision for VSS Skin with this new technique?

Indeed. I'm sick of going in to set gamma = 1.

I moved the specular node away and replaced it with parameters. The reason is with shader GC I need to anti-GC the specular color. I don't want you to be tempted to edit the color directly in the specular node, because then I will not be anti-gamma correcting it. This way, I have control.

In order for an auto-GC shader to work, all the nodes to the right of the surface have to have only black or white in them. Any other color and the auto-GC feature will not work.

 Can't wait to try this out.  Is it possible to do a sharp, B&W, Sin City type of shaders?