Question about pwToon Shading
EightiesIsEnough
Posts: 1,233
I have rendered this image, and I'd like to ask, what would I have to do in order to eliminate the white patches on the skin?
Also, in these two images..
How do I get rid of the unnecessary black shading, as shown in the legs in the second of the three images I posted?
Also, how do I create a thicker black outline on the blonde hair?
It's pretty good that I am on the right track regarding toon shading and making it look more like a 2D cartoon.
Post edited by EightiesIsEnough on
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Comments
specularity/glossiness often lead to those sorts of longer camera-facing reflections, and yours look like the light is right from the camera direction, so either moving the main lights off to the side some, or lowering the 'reflectivity' through spec/gloss will probably help. Widen the light source (HDR sky, or big box-light are good tricks) may make those highlights work better for you rather than getting rid of them. If too bright, lighten the skin and lower the lights, or vice-versa...
You might try lowering your lights on some surfaces, and raising your ambient a good amount, so the skin actually glows to the level you want. A few tooners don't even use lights, as odd as that sounds. It demands a bit more tweaking for each scene 'tone' change, and shadows become a new challenge (ever see a shadow on a lit light bulb?), but the technique is handy. consider keeping teeth white that way...
so for this, maybe drop the 'shiny', widen the light source to a big sky/light-box idea rather than a point source, and maybe fiddle with the ambient settings.
When you raise ambient, if you're using it all over your scene, you probably lower the rest of the lights to account for the expected imbalance that occurs (washout occurs on skin that glows and is lit...)
Hope these ideas get your gears going! I like what you're coming up with!
--ms
Thanks for the suggestion regarding the lighting issue.
Now if only I can get answers regarding the unnecessary blackness and smooth black borders, in addition to the black outline on the hair and not within the hair.
This might have useful links to shader presets fotr toon, which might help the outline issue. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/162321/
and this: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/195231/
When doing a 'flat' look toon render, I usually set specular strength to 0 (and sometimes diffuse max to 0 to get rid of shading altogether)
As for the black in second image, that's unfortunately inherent to a Normal based outlining; the outline is based on turning black on surfaces that are perpendicular to the camera view.
However, a flat length tilted away from the camera will stretch out the area that triggers the outline.
The only solution I've found is to carefully drop the outline width for that surface until it looks right, but that often doesn't work.
I highly recommend, for this reason, LineRender9000, which has a color ID system which sidesteps this problem nicely. It's a little more work, but it's the best outlining system I've encountered within Daz Studio.
So, how do I create a flat length tilted away from the camera?
Okay, here is my work, improved without the patches.
But I really would like to use better outlines on the hair. I am going to try the thicker outline and see what happens.
With hair I usually shut off internal outlines. I tend to prefer just outer lines.
Oddly enough, I did turn off internal outlines. If I did have internal outlines turned on, my hair would be completely black, implying that the hair has many narrow strands.
Here is a front view shot of the girl...
Oddly enough, the outline width is set to the highest number, 128. I am wondering if there seems to be something I overlooked regarding trying to add a solid black outline to the hairstyle?
I bet it's probably because the hair may be created with a lot of narrow hair strands, implying it may have been designed in Poser's hair room or something.
EDIT: The hairstyle is called Dynasty, and it is found in my inventory in the Poser Formats main directory. That said, I think it is safe to declare that the hairstyle was indeed created in Poser's Hair Room.
You know, some of those 'dark edges' you are fighting may be OK to leave. They look like shaded inking in many cases and may sometimes enhance the comic effect. Cetainly being able to control them is worth the research and experimentation, but if you stand-back a bit, you might find them useful. I like your results so far. Just an opinion...
View the hair in wireframe or untextured shaded mode in the viewport and you'll know right-away how the hair was modelled.
most non-dynamic non-strand hairs look like banana-peels or potato-chips on the head, where the strand-based hairs look like ... strands and from normal viewing distances are pretty much black due to the zillions of wireframe outlines in the viewport. non-strand hair uses transparency and alpha masks, but given the right shaders, can be made to outline the image edges, rather than (banana-peel) polygon edges.
Also, you can mix your shaders, so that not all of your surfaces are using pwtoon - if that works for you. Just select those you wish to change/experiment with and apply other shaders!
FWIW, I've toyed with taking my various hair color maps into photoshop/PSP/gimp and cartoonizing them there (outlines/contrast, etc.) and re-applying those maps to the hair, rather than trusting/forcing the render engine to do it. I'm certain it would work (not enough hours in a day). I believe it was @3DOutlaw that did some similar tweaking with clothing to get some great results in concert with the render techniques being used. I think you'd like his results (look around in these forums, and find his web-page to check his stuff out too. good stuff, and very helpful).
nice job on the skin tweaks!
cheers,
--ms