Kemono Friends and Cinema 4D
ghastlycomic
Posts: 2,531
I recently finished watching Kemono Friends to study how it was animated and was actually surprised to find that the story itself was interesting. In fact at times I found myself so focused on the story that I completely ignored the clipping and other 3D animation artifacts which goes to show what I've always maintained which is good writing will carry mediocre art.
The series is animated in Cinema 4D, and I was particularly impressed at how well it renders cell shading. I haven't seen anything for Daz Studio that comes even close to being able to render cell shading as well as C4D does. I have the Visual Styles Manga/Anime shaders and while they produce nice effects they still don't come close to the C4D cell shading plus it doesn't work with normal maps. Even if I could just adjust the display port toon shader to clamp at 2 shades it would be useful.
What comes closest to C4D's cell shading on Daz Studio?
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Comments
Sounds like a good movie actually.
I think you could get most of the way there by:
1) using no textures but only colors on the surfaces tabs for the models
2) avoid bump, normal, and other such maps but you make need to manually edit surfaces for models to be able to add 'flat color' details to them.
3) avoid glossiness and refraction, and other such real effects.
4) The black lines. I don't know for sure but I'm thinking of other's art that I've seen in the forums and gallery LineRenderer9000 in the DAZ Store does the best and has the most flexibility
I am wanting to do the same but more or a claymation style like Gumby & Pokey, Wallace & Gromit, (early) Fireman Sam and so on... The newer episodes are still good but they look more plastic.
I've noticed that for the most part backgrounds in KF are hand drawn and then used as billboard textures. Most of the background scenery is just billboards or very simple low poly with hand painted textures. Seems like only the hero props and figures get C4D cell shading.
You probably can find lots of free billboard elements for your animations with a CC0 search in Google or Bing. Also, Moho has some and so does Content Paradise but they cost money.
Making billboard styled props with 2D textures won't be a problem for me since I'm already a 2D illustrator and was planning to make my backgrounds like that anyway. It's a matter of getting the figures and hero props not to stand out too much from the hand drawn stuff that's the problem.