Well, keep in mind that you can get a very 'lineart' style with rendering.

Consider: http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/BW-Werewolf-621337162

and

http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Ratman-and-Asaatthi-583724200

Both done with PWToon.

And that's not even getting into postwork.

 

what model Wacom would people recommend? 

I have a Wacom Intuos 4, but any Wacom should do. I would recommend staying away from the tiny ones though, to me those are a bit harder to work with (at leat in my experience). A mid sized Wacom should work well. If it's your first tablet though, you likely don't need a high end one and can probably go with a less expensive model. I recommend ebay and looking into getting a used one to start with. 

Well, keep in mind that you can get a very 'lineart' style with rendering.

Consider: http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/BW-Werewolf-621337162

and

http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Ratman-and-Asaatthi-583724200

Both done with PWToon.

And that's not even getting into postwork.

 

what model Wacom would people recommend? 

I have a wireless Bamboo. The Bamboo with the 2.4 wireless cost less than $200. It takes getting used to drawing on plastic with plastic though. 

Now this is what I bought. There are newer, theorectically better models now you can buy for the same price (linked by amazon as a 'newr model available):

the Bamboo tablet:

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B005HGBF9W/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

the 2.4 GHz WiFi adaptor:

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B006MRAVFE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Well, keep in mind that you can get a very 'lineart' style with rendering.

Consider: http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/BW-Werewolf-621337162

and

http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Ratman-and-Asaatthi-583724200

Both done with PWToon.

And that's not even getting into postwork.

 

what model Wacom would people recommend? 

Well, keep in mind that you can get a very 'lineart' style with rendering.

Consider: http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/BW-Werewolf-621337162

and

http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Ratman-and-Asaatthi-583724200

Both done with PWToon.

And that's not even getting into postwork.

Not sure what a Bitrock is...?

This is from the log file:

Loading script: V:/Hobbies/Daz/Studio/content/Shaders/pwToon_DS4/pwToon.ds
DEBUG: "support/Poseworks/shaderDefinitions/surface/pwToonDef.ds" not found.
Script executed successfully: 

I have copied and pasted that pwToonDef.ds file in every support fodler structure I can find.  Still gets that error  :(

So I finaly got PWToon.  I run either DS 4.7 or 4.9, but neither are applying the shader.  :(

A few questions.  

First, I always install manually.  In the download there is a content folder (obvious where that goes), but there is also another folder:

Foldername:  DAZ Studio_4.5;4;4.x Public Build;4.x Private Build

Where does that go, or the stuff in it?

Second, to make sure I am tryign to apply correct...I just click a scene object (like a primitive sphere), open surfaces tab and select its material, and then double click the "pwtoon" icon in the content -> Shader Presets ->pwtoon_ds4 folder.

Then I am looking for the Pwtoon to replace the daz default shader at the top of the editor panel, and I can then apply a preset.

As someone who does a lot of lineart with PWToon... color me intrigued!

Yeah, you've gotten some pretty good-looking renders using PWToon!

As someone who does a lot of lineart with PWToon... color me intrigued!

Since it is based on custom cameras (camera shaders), LineRender's line art can be generated without changing object surfaces (materials), leaving your existing scenes intact.   

The built-in compositing allows for quickly combining your own rendering settings (using 3Delight, Nvidia Iray, or any built-in renderer of your choice) with the line art output from LineRender 9000. It's compatible with any textures, such as Visual Style Shaders and PwToon.  

Very nice...good thinking... 

For me, shadow and esp TRANSPARENCY control are important. Speed, is of course the biggest selling point for toon animators! 

On my watch list!

Oh, and regarding transparency, the compositing options allow for individual layer transparency, as well as using pre-existing images. For the most part I composite manually for my art, but the built-in compositing provides a pretty good idea of what the finished image will look like. I should mention that even if you're using the compositing features, all the individual images are generated separately as well, so you sort of get the best of both worlds (IMO).

This looks wonderful and I like the fact I don't have to change the scene to get the results.

I agree. That was one of my core design decisions. I was unable to get the outlines I wanted from any of the surface shaders I tried, and once I (finally) figured out how to get good line output independently, I realized the strength of having those two parts being separate. Black and white becomes easy. Pure line art becomes easy. Control over colors, having reflective surfaces, having different surfaces all become easy to do. Doing @Algovincian style art becomes one step closer, because LineRender 9000 automates a series of renders based on scene geometry. Having scenes that could work as both cartoon and "regular" 3d art is just sort of icing on the cake. 

For those curious about my cartoon style, at the moment I'm using a (home-cooked) variant on Visual Style Shaders, but have plans to make my own shader once this project dies down a little. 

Well, this is my "first rodeo" as a PA, so I'm not sure how long the process typically takes. I can tell you that the product is currently in review / testing with DAZ. I don't expect many issues with the product at this point, so hopefully within weeks.

The sooner, the better, I have a new project that I'm contemplating putting on hold until I get a chance to play with this.

In the meantime, credit card standing by...

-- Walt Sterdan

That's great to hear! I'm going as fast as I can! Ask the beta testers about my development pace. =)

The nice thing is that you could really work on all your scenes now -- get the posing and all that done, because LR9k should just plug in and be ready to generate some line art for you once it's ready. It's also fairly easy to create your own "settings" presets that you can apply to any of your scenes. At this point the process has become streamlined to the point of A) load my toon preset B) launch LR9k C) click Render D) walk away and make a sandwich. 

Sorry for the late responses here, I was on vacation! Anyway, Aloha and onto the answers! 

Since it is based on custom cameras (camera shaders), LineRender's line art can be generated without changing object surfaces (materials), leaving your existing scenes intact.   

The built-in compositing allows for quickly combining your own rendering settings (using 3Delight, Nvidia Iray, or any built-in renderer of your choice) with the line art output from LineRender 9000. It's compatible with any textures, such as Visual Style Shaders and PwToon.  

Very nice...good thinking... 

For me, shadow and esp TRANSPARENCY control are important. Speed, is of course the biggest selling point for toon animators! 

On my watch list!

Due to feedback from my talented beta testers, I created a Shadow camera that outputs shadows & opacity for easy compositing. Since going to a toon style, I've been having under 5 minute renders. It's just automates several renders, so render times are largely dependent on your lighting & texture setup, although my script has options to disable lights and shadows on a pass-by-pass basis, so it should handle that in a fairly flexible way.

I love the compositing option, looking forward to its release.  Might want to consider adding normals and/or depth cues as an option if possible, if not already included.

One of the included cameras is a Fresnel camera which gives a "normal" line look. I experimented with a bunch of different things and found that lines based on Normals tends to look rather "blocky" and I never found the results very useful. The Fresnel camera gives pretty reasonable results without the harsh geometric lines that normals do. Tell you what though, if you end up buying the product I'm happy to pass you a "Normals camera" that actually honors transparency. I'm confident the included cameras are better. =)

Do you (or any beta testers) have any samples of using this for building scenes, versus nature.  I am curious how it may handle all of various colors of a street with shops or something like that? 

Perhaps not the best example of what you're looking for, but check the attachments for a render by @KA1 that has a brick background. The product doesn't have a lot to do with colors really. The scene geometry gets translated mostly into black and white, and then that output is used for the line generation. That's the best way I've found to get clean-looking line art. (Because too many colors confuses the outliner.)

I would be interested in buying this product. One question though, can it render the scenes in black and white as an option? For a more comic/manga feel.

Yes indeed. Check the attachments for a few examples. The results are fairly flexible.

Is there a way to go from the line art to water color? I will look forward to this product if you put in the DAZ Store.

Well, this product mainly generates the line art. If you can get regular renders to look like watercolor, then you'd have that coloring with the line art from LR9k. You'd think a watercolor shader would be possible, but I haven't investigated that as of yet. Another product idea I have is creating post-render script support for Photoshop filters, which would potentially be another avenue if I decide to pursue that path.

Well, I just picked up PWToon, to use my coupon, so we will see if that sates our needs for more shaders  ;-)

Since it is based on custom cameras (camera shaders), LineRender's line art can be generated without changing object surfaces (materials), leaving your existing scenes intact.   

The built-in compositing allows for quickly combining your own rendering settings (using 3Delight, Nvidia Iray, or any built-in renderer of your choice) with the line art output from LineRender 9000. It's compatible with any textures, such as Visual Style Shaders and PwToon.  

Very nice...good thinking... 

For me, shadow and esp TRANSPARENCY control are important. Speed, is of course the biggest selling point for toon animators! 

On my watch list!

Fantastic job! Your toon rendering really looks great. Did you achieve that using pwtoon or some other special shaders? I'm figuring it's a 3Delight render. Looks like you could recreate not only your favorite scenes, but an entire animated show! 

 

Thank you!  I'm glad that you liked it! 

Yes.  I used PWToon, but tweaked LOTs of the settings around and added a few of my own textures here and there.   Yup!  Totally 3Delight Render.  For me, Iray is not a 'thing' yet with a Xeon FX 1800, I don't even have enough memory, nor Cuda cores to obtain that kind of rendering engine format.

And as to pretty much creating my entire animated show... well, I write/create a contination of the comics for my favorite series, and all of the characters have been pretty much built for each, so yeah...  and I'm putting together an animated YouTube Trailer in order to advertise the move of my comics over to Patreon.... so, I'm not far from actually creating a full animated toon already with all of the footage that I've put together thus far.

My unlisted YT animation clip made in DAZ3D Studio based on the DiC Entertainment 1980s "Legend of Zelda" cartoon Link --- meets Ocarina of Time Nintendo Link --> It's part of my long running fan-comic of how the two meet up and why.  Gawd.... I'm such a nerd.

(I've put this link in another post, so apologies to those who have already seen it.  I just don't have much YouTube footage of DAZ animation uploaded at this time, since I'm still in the process of edting everything together).

Wow! That looks fantastic. I'd love to see more when you get it uploaded. Really nice work. 

I will definitely post it when I'm done for you.  I'm just going back down this thread at 3:30am, and seeing what others have done, from the vitiligo zombies, to the person mowing the grass in their gorillas suit, and the scaled down salt shaker models, to the weird bird with lizard tale.  This is the funniest post just prior to the funny posts that I'm sure I'll see today once everyone wakes up and sees the new Gen 3 Female: the Full Body Model named Bessie.   

Uh....

Oh, no.  I'm not starting that hate thread.  I've gotta get sleep now, so I can get back to my animation process when the sun rises.

Fantastic job! Your toon rendering really looks great. Did you achieve that using pwtoon or some other special shaders? I'm figuring it's a 3Delight render. Looks like you could recreate not only your favorite scenes, but an entire animated show! 

 

Thank you!  I'm glad that you liked it! 

Yes.  I used PWToon, but tweaked LOTs of the settings around and added a few of my own textures here and there.   Yup!  Totally 3Delight Render.  For me, Iray is not a 'thing' yet with a Xeon FX 1800, I don't even have enough memory, nor Cuda cores to obtain that kind of rendering engine format.

And as to pretty much creating my entire animated show... well, I write/create a contination of the comics for my favorite series, and all of the characters have been pretty much built for each, so yeah...  and I'm putting together an animated YouTube Trailer in order to advertise the move of my comics over to Patreon.... so, I'm not far from actually creating a full animated toon already with all of the footage that I've put together thus far.

My unlisted YT animation clip made in DAZ3D Studio based on the DiC Entertainment 1980s "Legend of Zelda" cartoon Link --- meets Ocarina of Time Nintendo Link --> It's part of my long running fan-comic of how the two meet up and why.  Gawd.... I'm such a nerd.

(I've put this link in another post, so apologies to those who have already seen it.  I just don't have much YouTube footage of DAZ animation uploaded at this time, since I'm still in the process of edting everything together).

Wow! That looks fantastic. I'd love to see more when you get it uploaded. Really nice work. 

Fantastic job! Your toon rendering really looks great. Did you achieve that using pwtoon or some other special shaders? I'm figuring it's a 3Delight render. Looks like you could recreate not only your favorite scenes, but an entire animated show! 

 

Thank you!  I'm glad that you liked it! 

Yes.  I used PWToon, but tweaked LOTs of the settings around and added a few of my own textures here and there.   Yup!  Totally 3Delight Render.  For me, Iray is not a 'thing' yet with a Xeon FX 1800, I don't even have enough memory, nor Cuda cores to obtain that kind of rendering engine format.

And as to pretty much creating my entire animated show... well, I write/create a contination of the comics for my favorite series, and all of the characters have been pretty much built for each, so yeah...  and I'm putting together an animated YouTube Trailer in order to advertise the move of my comics over to Patreon.... so, I'm not far from actually creating a full animated toon already with all of the footage that I've put together thus far.

My unlisted YT animation clip made in DAZ3D Studio based on the DiC Entertainment 1980s "Legend of Zelda" cartoon Link --- meets Ocarina of Time Nintendo Link --> It's part of my long running fan-comic of how the two meet up and why.  Gawd.... I'm such a nerd.

(I've put this link in another post, so apologies to those who have already seen it.  I just don't have much YouTube footage of DAZ animation uploaded at this time, since I'm still in the process of edting everything together).

PS--- I didn't realize I uploaded so tiny.  Here is a link to the big version that I've made:

http://aiijuingraphics.deviantart.com/art/Oh-Yeah-Check-THESE-Guns-623667497

Fantastic job! Your toon rendering really looks great. Did you achieve that using pwtoon or some other special shaders? I'm figuring it's a 3Delight render. Looks like you could recreate not only your favorite scenes, but an entire animated show! 

OH noes!    I'm sorry!

Yeah, I've had the PWToon shaders for a while, so I didn't realize that it (or the bundle) hadn't been included in the sale today.  

I bought those shaders at full price over a year ago because I was really new to this site back then.  I didn't realize that this site had a Prime club and rotating sales and such.  (Yup, I even paid full price for most of Deviney's brushes too, because I found this site by accident just Google queuing for better photoshop brushes than what Deviantart members had to offer).

It would have been nice for you if the PWToon shaders had been included in the sale today, especially since I know that you do lots of toon 'stuff' yourself (love your AD for Gen 2, BTW and also extra THANKS for the tutorial on using Blender to take an MMD hair and converting over to an OBJ file!).  

PS: Did you notice that the banner for today's sale has a picture of Konrad, and he's not really included in the sale? (been waiting for him to drop into a sale when I have $$$ so I can snag him)...

Be nice if they can add pwToon in the list!  :)  It's been languishing in my wishlist...

Yeah I don't know how and if exported Studio content can be imported into SFM. I'd assume it can import OBJs, but I've never actually used it. I have seen some decent renders done with XNA, but nothing with any sort of environment. 

I do feel we're starting to get stagnant - not the PAs so much, but our general capabilities. Iray was a nice technological jump, but in doing so, we've abandoned a lot of the interesting out-of-the-box ideas like pwToon that used to make things exciting. Hopefully DAZ has some big plans for Studio 5 besides the likely start of a new Genesis line.   ;)

I did pretty much this same render in 3DL and PWToon (black and white), but there's been an idea floated that you can't use Iray on anything but a $6k+ machine because otherwise big scenes take hours/days to render, if they render at all.

And while I think there are certain types of scenes that won't run very fast with Iray (particularly ones with lots and lots of texture maps), I think that's a huge exaggeration.

This scene rendered in one hour on a $2800 machine. (2x GTX 970) I rendered it at 3496 x 2160 with a beauty canvas, then shrunk it 50% (I like doing that to get good detail)

(Trees are instances; 15,000 instances generated with UltraScatter on top of http://www.daz3d.com/winter-terrains-for-daz-studio ; the original winter terrain shader doesn't work in Iray, so I ended up using my procedural thing. Any conventional shader runs into some unpleasant tiling or resolution problems)