My Discovery - of interest to Filament / Cartoon shaders
Drogo Nazhur
Posts: 1,286
As I'm sure most already know, Genesis 9 introduced us to a new Filament shader option which gives a cartoon'ish look to the renders and is an improvement over the existing "Cartoon" render option. I've been using this a lot for objects in the background of my scenes -- magazine covers, a television screen, etc. I'm also going to be doing some illustrated stories of a story within a story.
But I'm sure nobody cares about any of that. However, what you might be interested in is something that I did by accident. I overlayed an IRAY render with the old cartoon render and I really like how it came out. I like it even better that the new Filament render.

I just wanted to share my discovery in case others also like it and want to have the same "look" to their cartoon renders.

Comments
For Filament, I like the Filatoon outline on top of the figure, except not black, with the Iray mats underneath. To me, the Filament renders really need the outline, so they wouldn't look as washed out. Then, I also throw in the Genesis 9 Tear, and dye that sort of dark pink to match the skin. Rotation of the dome also affects the lighting, so I play around with that. This example is of the anime/toon figure, except I dialed it out and replaced the shape with a realistic one, like Maya for Genesis 9.
I don't like the Cartoon Shaded much. But if I do use it, I always make the scleras invisible so they won't have the "white eyes."
Thank you for the recommedation.
That's a cool discovery!
Have you tried the Filatoon shaders that come with Daz Studio? They can give very cool NPR looks without the extra work of rendering two different images and then layering them in an image editor. :)
3Diva is too modest to recommend her own product, but if you're enjoying tinkering with Filatoon you owe it to yourself to take a look at:
https://www.daz3d.com/easy-filatoon
It allows you to test dozens dozens of different Filatoon settings for materials, lights, environments, outlines and more. It's amazing how many tests you can do so incredibly rapidly. I highly recommend it.
Seconded, definitely seconded, it is indeed an excellent tool, and the cherry on top, is that it works flawlessly with the 2026 beta!
My issue with Filatoon is the lack of recent support both by PAs (forgivable since no one is clamouring for the stuff) and Daz Originals. Every time I see a new DO bundle... no filatoon option. Maybe a cool environment drops? No filatoon option. Clothing? Nope. Pose pack? No.
I think the "WOW" factor has worn of for most of the PAs. I would have loved to seen at least a LIE preset that added Borderlands or Telltale Games style ink marks to the characters, but thems the breaks.