Wow, Satria!  I could not have described that better.  What you said is exactly right.

The amazingly good support for anime style figures is part of what keeps me in the Poser compatible world too.  If you have done any cel-shaded work, I would love to see you post it. :-)

I've got a sickness... and the only cure is...

Oh, I guess I did not realize that I could render to frames.  That is an option.  I have not tried that before.  Sounds like the entire pipleline might be a little bit of a pain.

Yes, I am so interested in RWBY, because I have been working on replicating the look of anime with cel-shading in Poser for years.  I always thought that Poser, DAZ, and Carrara would be great tools for producing that kind of animation, but I have found very few other people that were interested in specifically cel-shaded anime style animation in Poser.  I'm really glad to see that someone has proven that this can be done successfully on a production scale.

Personally, I think my cel-shading looks better, though. :-)

Toon Ink and Topaz labs stuff looks like it is geared toward still frame images.  May be good stuff, but I am aiming for animation, so it does not work for my case.

I am developing my own script now to set up toon shading the way I want, but the Poser API does not allow me to make it 100% they way I would like.  I think I'm close enough to be satisfied, however.

Thanks again for everyone's feedback!

thanks, ghostman!

Thanks, hborre and bagginsbill!

Wow, bagginsbill!  That was a brilliant hack!  Still wish there was support, but that was really cool. :-)

Thanks for the clear answers! Hopefully, we can get this as a feature in a future release.

Thanks to everybody for their input!

stewer: That makes a lot of sense, since that is the only info I found when looking up .cg files in Google.

estherau: I had not seen those before.  I was very thorough in checking out toon/cel shading resources a couple of years back, but have not researched recently.  Do you know if olivier's shaders function in the way I was trying to accomplish?  Do the light and dark color adjust their shade depending on the intensity of the light, or are the colors fixed and show for a fixed range of intensity?

The reason I am thinking about this is that the way the default toon shader works in Poser, you need to change the colors that you assign to light and dark for different lighting situations.  They don't adjust appropriately on their own.  For a bright, outdoor scene, your dark color will be only slightly darker than your light color.  For a darker room, you might want to leave the light color the same, but darken the darker color due to the smaller amount of ambient light in a room.  For a scene where the character is in a spotlight with no ambient light, the light color should be very bright and the dark color should be almost black.

See what I'm saying?  Wouldn't it be nice if the shader just chose the light and dark colors for you appropriately based on the lighting situation?

Thanks again for all your input,

-digitani

Ah!  Thank you nruddock!  Support for multi-vendor items had not occurred to me.  That would solve that problem quite nicely.  Now I need to find the answer to that question as well.

Thanks for the feedback!  I really appreciate you taking the time to respond.

To clarify, in my example question I was only asking for what it would take to construct a .obj file.  I am aware that there are more steps to the process.  I may be able to handle them myself, or I may also consider farming some of those out as well, but the initial modeling is the minimum that I would like to hire someone else to do.  I need some idea of this cost as a starting point.

All of you have mentioned the possibility of a partnership between myself and the artist.  This is, of course, a perfectly good arrangement, but it has complications.  One entity has to collect the proceeds from the sales.  If that entity is either me or the artist, it leaves the other person in the position of having to trust the one collecting the money to give them their proceeds on a regular basis.  This does not appeal to me when dealing with total strangers, plus it is a pain for the person dealing out the money.  The other way to do this is to form a business together, but that is too much of a committment in my mind.

I would rather take the approach of paying a reasonable cost up front and taking my chances in the marketplace.  I think this is a better business model for my situation, because it is much simpler.  The artist must choose how much money will make it worth his time to release the copyright.  It is reasonable that releasing the copyright would increase the price, but you also have to consider the fact that there is value in getting a guaranteed amount of money for your work.  Selling in the marketplace has no guarantees.  I will be absorbing the risk of not earning back enough to make it worth my time or investment.

I would love to hear more responses, and if anyone has experience with this or with forming a partnership with an artist, I would love to hear about that as well.

Thanks again,

Thanks for your feedback!

Actually, I learned from some of the good people at the DAZ forums about using proxy figures to improve simulation.  Actually its more than a speed improvement.  In Carrara, it is a necessity, because with out a simplified proxy, the hair absolutely will not simulate correctly.  It suffers from a jumping/jittering problem if allowed to collide with a complex figure.

Antaran, I'll try to get a good post on my website describing my results.

I think I'm in! :-)

Thanks!  I have actually reworked it based on feedback that I have gotten from those who have seen it.  Also, I uploaded the new version in a more internet friendly format:  YouTube.

You can view the new version here:

Vigilante Overlook

Please let me know what you think.

Sorry for the trouble.  I will upload a different format that is more friendly.  I am reworking the animation itself based on feedback I have gotten from others, so I'll wait until I am finished with that before posting the new format here.

Thanks for trying and letting me know there is a problem!

Well, that is true, but I am already challenging myself by learning several 3D packages at once, plus various other projects I am working on.  This all adds up to slow progress, but it is the way I enjoy working. :)