I use Toon shaders a lot, and some meshes don't like them. To get a reasonably normal figure withPoser, I have to decrease the linewidth to 0, which spoils a good part of the interest in the toon node. Anyone has an idea of why it is doing this, and what can be done about it ? Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

It looks like the object polygons are having lines added to them, I don`t know how to fix it, but I am sure that there is a way. This happens with my free robot too :(

Looking at the toon shader I think I see why. I need to play with some things, but I should have a pretty decent chunk on this shader in about a week -- long time, I know, but I'm swamped. in part, though, look at material groupings...

I don`t think that the material groupings is the problem, it is a problem with the actual object file.

xantor, I'm a total sub zero for modeling. When you say "lines added to the obj",do you mean several lines joining the same vertices, or lines of text added in the obj file ? In the second event, a run through UVmapper would fix it, but I tried it and it did not work. Can you think of a way to correct this in a modeler ? OddDitty : thanks for looking into it. I don't mind the delay : I've been hitting my head on this problem for 2 months now...

it looks like the actual wireframe lines is what I meant. Someone had a solution for this a year or so ago but I can`t remember it. Welding the vertices might work.

i tried to use the "weld vertices" command in UV mapper Pro, and to import the obj with "weld vertices" option on, to no avail...

It would be easy enough to see if there are dozens of spurious groups or materials using the group editor, since the lines usually appear at group/material boundaries.

Can you do a close up picture of the wrong effect? Maybe just the head of the figure, because it looks to me like the mesh lines that are showing and a bigger picture would show one way or another what is wrong.

Could you try exporting the whole figure as an object and reimporting it and adding the toon shader? I tried it with my free robot and it is definitely the mesh lines that are showing, but when I exported it as a wavefront object and reimported it, the problem seemed to be fixed.

I'm at work, I'll post a close up later on. I have tried the import/export technique, with or without the "weld vertices" option, but it didn't work.

Now this is really getting weird ! From close-up, even with line width at 1, there is hardly a problem, only a few artefacts. If I take the camera back a little evrything gets screwed up (for all the material groups BTW)...

I'm totally clueless here. Any help will be much appreciated ! Edited : for all of the material groups BUT the chest...

Message edited on: 09/06/2004 14:39

When I exported the object and reimported it I had make polygon normals consistent checked, maybe that is what fixed the problem for me.

Nope, I just tried it and it made matters even worse...

OK, finally found a solution.
Since it was obviously polygon based, I passed the obj through "Hi-res" a subdivision program available at DAZ, and it solved the problem.
The downside is that it brought the polycount from 8 000 polys to 30 000 polys... Edit : of course, any ideas based on cheap software to improve on this solution are more than welcome !

Message edited on: 09/07/2004 15:11

I dunno why, but my toon shaders work fine...i'm sure compiler knows due to the test pictures showing all the anime lights in action with Cresent's toon shaders that i did...Well, i dunno why, but my low poly works just fine...

Crescent's shaders work because they have a lineWidth at 0. Now I'll see if increasing the LineWidth really is worth the pain. If not, I'll change this in my shaders. Thanks to all of you who have helped me figure this out.

What's the diff of using the line width and what cresent did?

I tried both and it seems not to make a difference. As far as I can tell, the toon shader was meant to work on its own, the linewidth being useful in this case. For Crescent's shaders and others derived, the line is replaced by the edge_blend node, overriding the linewidth parameter. I'll replace my shaders in the freestuff.

By the way, this isn`t a poser 5 only problem. illustrator in 3dsmax and the lightwave built in cartoon shaders both have this effect happening with certain objects.