Getting a good outline for a Toon Effect

gibrril_fa945a6cee

Hi all,

I'm trying to get a good outline for a cartoon effect in my 3Delight render. Thusfar PWtoon gives me the wrong outlines. As you can see, it "blackens out" most of the floor, while providing no outline at all on the contours of the floor stones or the wooden planks that make up the counter. How do I fix this? Would the Linerender 9000 be any good? I found a manual somewhere, but I get completely blank images out of it, or images without any outline at all...

 

Thanks a lot,

Me

Oso3D

Linerender9000 is awesome.

The most powerful part of it is that it adds a ColorID channel to every surface, and Main Camera Lines are drawn wherever there is a ColorId difference.

Also, it's fresnel lines, while not perfect, are better than most Normal based outlines (which I'm pretty sure is what PWToon uses)

gibrril_fa945a6cee

Thanks for the reply! But I can't get Linerender 9000 to work... It gives me completely white images, or images without an outline. I have two renderpasses. One with the 3Dlight render, the other one with the Scripted Linerender. Both are enabled, both are set to produce a PNG. How do I get this to work? A video tutorial on this would be so awesome, as I'm clearly not getting the written instructions.... :)

I've rendered out a couple of passes with the Linerender9000 pass as the only pass enabled, that gives me two images, one completely black and one completely white... No matter which settings I apply... What am I doing wrong?

Thanks a lot,

Me

gibrril_fa945a6cee

I got it to work I think, but it does not pick up on all the lines either... And you still have to overllay both images manually...

nonesuch00

Well, what you could do but it's a bit of work is drop all textures where they aren't needed, eg, you can't drop the iris textures but you can replace with iris textures that are more flatly and brightly colored. Skin you can drop the textures and choose a single color in surface. Some with clothing although in some cases that will cause you to loose pocket and such details. for streets choose a grey color like asphalt although you'll probably loose traffic control lines but you can go into the Geometry Editor and create new surfaces to add back in the traffic control lines and so on.

It is a bit of work and you should safe your new EGA or VGA Color palette materials as material or shader presets so you can reuse them more easily. Try to use brighter colors.

scorpio

Floors are a problem with PWtoon, I didn't usually bother to use the shader on them, I found that if you use basic textures they usually looked fine. 

The black is down to camera angles it can be got rid of by altering the camera and the lighting.I think the inner line effects it as well its a long time since I have used PWToon so can't remember the details sorry.

gibrril_fa945a6cee

I see... A lot of work for a so called one click solution...

It does pick up the lines on the brick wall in abundance, but no floor stones...

Oso3D

Is any of this stuff billed as one click solutions?

 

gibrril_fa945a6cee

Not litterlay, but the manual talks about three very easy steps. But as it turns out, the success of those steps is highly dependent on the angle of the camera. If I point the camera straight at the floor, it does pick up the lines very faintly... The product does as promised, but does not fullfill my current needs. That's all.

I was trying to do all of my work within DS, but maybe I should involve other programs. Is there something in Gimp or photoshop that "cartoonifies" texture maps? (In an attempt to put the outlines I'm looking for straight on the textures)

Thanks a lot,

Me

gibrril_fa945a6cee

By the way, is there any way to keep PWToon from throwing a huge shadow on the floor like in the image in attachment? Getting rid of that without losing the outline would also be wonderfull.

Thanks a lot,

Me

nonesuch00

I've never seen complex textures converted in a good fashion to 2D without a lot of work. Some of it does a decent job getting most of the way there.

gibrril_fa945a6cee

I'd go for the solution to tweek the textures before applying them to the model in DS, but I'm kind of hoping there is a script that can do that for me, instead of me manually tracing over every line I want to show up as an outline...

Worlds_Edge

gibrril_fa945a6cee said:

Not litterlay, but the manual talks about three very easy steps. But as it turns out, the success of those steps is highly dependent on the angle of the camera. If I point the camera straight at the floor, it does pick up the lines very faintly... The product does as promised, but does not fullfill my current needs. That's all.

I was trying to do all of my work within DS, but maybe I should involve other programs. Is there something in Gimp or photoshop that "cartoonifies" texture maps? (In an attempt to put the outlines I'm looking for straight on the textures)

Thanks a lot,

Me

I haven't figured linerender out yet (I'm new to Daz).  I did manage to use photoshop actions to get outlines/comic book type renders if that is what you would like to achieve outside of Daz (until you get the results you want from linerender).  I used Adam Wright's photoshop action, toon it 2 (bwtoon) which I got at Rendo.  The photoshop action left some color in the picture so then I desaturated/turned to black and white, copied the bw image and pasted it on top with the multiply setting.  I will try to attach the pic but may not be able to, this is my first attempt ever and only my 5th or 6th render.

You can get similar effect using photoshop filters, filter forge filters, and topaz labs filters.

 

 

 

 

Oso3D

What I do with LineRender9000:

Add Toon camera. I remove the first and last entry and shut off composite (not interested in any of those things), leaving Main Camera lines and Fresnel lines. I open the script, switch to PNG (my preference), save settings.

If I want to use ColorID, I do a quick test render from the script at a small size (like 50x50) to activate/add ColorID parameters to surfaces, set them accordingly.

I typically work with images ~2160x2160, so I usually up the line thickness to 5 or so, depending.

One thing that might be fooling you is that the lines can be very faint in thumbnail, and the images are mostly transparent -- if you really want a good look at them, you need to bring them into an image editor and add a white layer underneath them so the black lines are obvious.

 

 

gibrril_fa945a6cee

Thanks for the replies!

I'll check out the photoshop effects!

Thanks for the walk through on LineRender9000. So for both passes do you use the LineRender Scripted?

Thanks a lot,

Me

Oso3D

Yes; I just use the script which defaults to that, and bam.

 

gibrril_fa945a6cee

And then you overlay the images in Photoshop? This might actually work, both camera's combined, add up to a very nice outline indeed.

I stand corrected, this IS an awesome product :)

Pixel8ted

Lots of ways to do that if you postwork it in Photoshop. The quick and dirty way is to use the Poster Edges Filter. Filter<Artistic Poster Edges.

No need to buy actions when you can roll your own. There are many ways to do this.

Here's one way:

1. Make a copy of your image.
2. Desaturate your image copy. (Note: My example I added a Hue/Sat Adjustment Layer; then merged a copy just an alternative way.)
3. Apply Filter<Other<Highpass (Low amounts will make thin edges; high amounts make thick edges....can use other sharpening methods but using highpass lets you see what you are doing.)
4. Add a Levels Adjustment layer. (Set black and white points to set grays to black and white...curves could alternately be used if desired but not as fast/easy as levels.)

Optional steps follow:

5. Merge a copy of steps 1-4.
6. Copy the merged layer then apply Filter<Artistic<Poster Edges. (Can set opacity/blend mode of this layer to taste. This is why I told you to apply this to a merged copy layer.)
7. Copy merged layer from step 6. Change blend mode to Screen then set opacity of this layer to taste. Just adds a second control to set line work to taste. Could use a different blend mode if desired. I just like screen but experimentation in Photoshop is a good thing. :) )

If you want a color version, turn off all layers except the orginal and a merged copy of your final black and white image. Experiment with the merged black and white layer's blend mode and opacity to get desired line effect over your color original image.

Example is Start Point; Black and White Steps; Color Version Example.

Edit: You can further refine your black and white by adding solid color adjustment layers colored white. Change layer mode to Overlay; fill with black. Use a white brush...vary opacity as needed...with mask selected to remove unwanted line details. You may have to use several of these layers to remove all of the desired detail. (Just one way...could also just hit up with a white brush but I like the flexibility of doing it this way.)

Edit: Added Example for refined detail using solid white overlay layers masked.




 

will.barger.arts

Not sure it's exactly what you're looking for re: simplifying textures for cartoon-like effects ... but *if* you're a Photoshop "guy", you might check out some of the related detail-simplify plugins by TopazLabs. 

djigneo

One thing I've been experimenting recently with that has been giving promising results is using the "main" renders from the LineRender9000 cameras - for example, Fresnel or Edge blend renders. Running those images through post-processing filters seems to give much better "artistic" line results than trying to run a full-color image through a "cartoon" or pencil effect. Using that sort of output with the "clean" lines that LineRender9000 gives a pretty decent-looking line drawing.