Toon Renders in Daz Studio?
digitell
Posts: 587
in The Commons
Is it possible to get good toonish renders in Daz Studio? If so, does anyone know of any good tutorials? Special shaders/lights or cameras that work well?
Thank you for any guidance you can give me!
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Bishonen Taurus has a set of shaders which do a beautiful job of giving things a 'toon, or graphic novel look.
pwToon works pretty well. Also the Visual Style shaders, though they don't tile (my only complaint with them). And there's a Toon Style camera, which I don't have, so I can't comment on.
- Note, I haven't yet tried any of these in 4.9, but pwToon and Visual Style were both working for me in 4.8
Hi JOdel! Thank you for this recommendation! I will go look for it! :)
I've been very happy with PWToon shader. Gives a lot of control and pretty easy to use.
Hi DaWater Rat! I have looked at toony camera but have heard that it has some issues..so am a bit leary to spend 20 bucks on it until I get more positive info on it. I will look up pwtoon works! Thank you so much for chiming in..I am new to Daz Studio but wanting to learn and conquer it lol! Wish me luck! I will need it! :)
Hi Timmins! I am looking at the TWToon now. Got it in my cart and am waiting for March to hit so I can use my Plat Club coupon on it! Thank you guys so much for your help! :)
Some of my PWToon renders:
http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Dobie-Guard-PWToon-587892145?q=sort:time gallery:Willbear&qo=50
http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Colo-584676679?q=sort:time gallery:Willbear&qo=92
http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/SciScene-Toon-585241043
http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Falling-Home-584280250
Thank you for posting these! They look fabulous! I am thrilled that this can also do black and white. Looks to be a great tool for toon renders. I will certainly purchase this tomorrow! Thank you! :)
A good starting point for the B&W is to go with 'draft diagram' preset and switch blues to white or black.
There are a bunch of presets that set various effects, although for my webcomic I've moved to simply converting to PWToon, turning on outlining/interior lines, and then maybe changing line size, but I'm emulating a semi-realistic style.
Great renders, Will !!
On the sci-scene toon image, it has a kind of TROn quality where his skin looks more real than the rest. Did you use a different shader on his skin?
Excellent work!
Do you use the 3Delight >General>Style>Cartoon or do you leave it at Default? many thanks!
I left it at default. I've experimented with Cartoon-style render settings, but was never quite happy with it -- not enough control, and I have mixed feelings about the 'limited number of color shades' approach (similar with DzToon, which comes with Daz pro, so you have it, but does similarly).
For the sci-scene toon image, the shirt is a simple red color with Diffuse Upper/Lower bound set to 0%. (The bounds set how shaded it is -- setting both to 0% removes all the lighter shading it would normally have)
The skin has the same upper/lower bound thing, but also has a texture map, so the texture does show through but the skin is a bit 'blown out' (IE: the highlights/white dominate and wash everything out)
The result is that texture shows through a little bit, but it's dominated by simple colors and outlines, which is a neat effect.
For my webcomic I ended up deciding I liked fully shaded stuff better, so I have Upper Bound 100%, Lower Bound 0%, and it has this sort of semi-realistic but illustrated look to it that I enjoy.
Also, a note: in PWToon, if you want the effect of 'ambient' color, treat Shading Color as equivalent -- wherever the diffuse color darkens, it will then revert to shading color (which could be brighter, or a medium color, or a texture, or whatever).
Other notes: I find it necessary to adjust outline thickness depending on the image size and how far various figures may be from the camera, or the effect I want by character. Sometimes you want thick lines on clothing and thinner lines on characters.
Stuff seen 'edge on,' like floors or the tops of crates, can screw up outline and 'fill' solidly black. Dropping outline thickness should help.
Also also:
There's a free Geoshell outline shader available here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12960659/Daz3DWork/Freebies/TNP_GeoShellOutline_FreebieShader.zip
It adds outlines to various objects using geoshell, and you can adjust thickness by changing offset.
Now, PWToon does a lot of cool things that this shader doesn't, but there are times you can pull stuff with the geoshell shader that don't work quite right with PWToon. Like, for example, you have a table and want thick outlines, but the top keeps turning flat black. You can use a geoshell, reduce it's height so only the sides are outside, and apply the geoshell shader to it, and voila.
Thanks for this info Timmins.William!