Digital Art Zone

I searched the forum and was not able to find any thread related to my question so I’m posting a question about using YAToon with Carrara 7 Pro. I’m on a mac running os 10.6.8. I recently found YAToon and installed the SimpleLightingModel.dat, mcx and txt files in the extensions folder as instructed. I’m able to locate YAToon in the pulldown at the Multichannel shader level. But once I select it, my shader becomes flat. The render also shows the shader as flat. I don’t know if I’m missing something obvious or if it’s a bug on the mac or with this operating system. Can anyone advise? Thanks in advance.

i dont think it is a version for mac i only see windows on his page

Actually there are 2 for mac. Its under Ver.1.10 OS-X. Carrara 6 and Carrara 7. I’m hoping someone can give some direction on the one for v7.

I’ve sent the developer a couple emails but I have not gotten any response.

os 10 what?. i think that it was developed for 10.4 or earlier. probably will not work on 10.6.8

That seems odd that it would be developed for 10.4 since OS 10.5 was released ay ear before Carrara 7 was released. Oh well, I was hoping for a solution since YAToon looks to do a better job than Toon Pro.

Isn’t a ‘toon shader supposed to make a flat look, similar to cell shading or am I missing something? Can you post a screen shot of your render settings and maybe your shaders?

Guess I was not specific enough when I said “flat”, and a screengrab is much more helpful. shader01.jpg shows a plastic shader from the library in the shader editor. shader02 shows where I’m changing the setting to YAToon at the top level and shader03 shows how the plastic shader flattens out and no changes in the toon settings makes any change. It stays flat. It renders the same way in my scene.

I’m posting the link to these on my website since putting an image on the forum has too many restrictions-
http://www.jackwhitney.com/toonIssue/shader01.jpg
http://www.jackwhitney.com/toonIssue/shader02.jpg
http://www.jackwhitney.com/toonIssue/shader03.jpg

It is supposed to make it “flat” looking.  I’m using the C8 version on Windows and if just put it on a sphere and render it the sphere will just look like a colored cell circle.

If I want it to show in the render that it a sphere done in a “cell style” I need to light the scene differently.  :Iight settings and placement will affect how “flat” it looks.

Hi Jack

Out of interest, have you used Toon Pro much?

Edit: I pulled it out to have a go it seems to work pretty well. this is from someone with no experience in the software. Just doing a line render is worth the costs of admission. you are also aware of VectorStyle?

http://www.daz3d.com/shop/vectorstyle-2-for-carrara

Love the dog on your site

OK, I’ve put a few more jpegs up at my site to illustrate my dilemma with YAToon. A while back I modeled a portrait of Arnold as Conan. In these examples I created the background separately in Painter and was hoping to render him in comic style to fit the background more.

This one was done with Toon Pro using both cell shaders and Toon render.

http://www.jackwhitney.com/toonIssue/conanToon01.jpg

This one uses only the Toon render

http://www.jackwhitney.com/toonIssue/conanToon02.jpg

This one uses the YAToon extension and when I said “flat” I meant without form and color.

http://www.jackwhitney.com/toonIssue/conanToon03.jpg

So I’m not sure what is causing the problem. I only wish I could use it as well as Toon Pro. By the way, I do know know about the Vectorstyle Plug in. I contributed the artwork of the robot T Rex and claw with the sphere for the box cover.

Oh and thanks for the compliments on the dog. He was modeled in Hexagon and rigged/rendered in Carrara with the NPR render settings.

jtwhit - 04 October 2012 02:02 PM

Oh and thanks for the compliments on the dog. He was modeled in Hexagon and rigged/rendered in Carrara with the NPR render settings.

pleasure

It’s good to see someone making use of these things commercially.

On your Yahtoon problem _ I think it is actually making arnie more attractive

But seriously - it ;looks like it is setting the alpha channel to zero.

you could try asking bcrice- he has been posting toon things in different places eg http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/8123/

Try cranking up the scene’s ambient light if you haven’t tried that yet.

Looks like an alpha channel issue.

YAToon is a lighting adjustment whereas Toon Pro is a an actual shader, yeah? Maybe people don’t differentiate between the two.

Oh and a trick (I guess) for Toon Pro.

Put highlights to 1000 on flesh and fabric; and pretty much leave alone for leather and metals. That way you won’t get that funky reflection on skin.

Bottom slider I knock to 50 for everything besides flesh, which I always knock up to 80.

Someone just posted in a different thread about morphing shaders. A guy was basically asking how to move his shader from normal skin to wolf an skin in the timeline. The answer he got was something about a multi shader hierarchy where you could slider between them? I’ll have to look at it again because I too have always liked the idea of blending Toon Pro with YAToon. I can do it in PS, but then it’s like saving two global shaders with two different shade styles and rednering twice, etc.

Right now in Carrara about the closest I’ve come to “blending” the two is to use Toon Pro on clothing and prop textures and use YAToon on flesh in the same model. But that’s not really blending.