I'm sorry, I am not going to read all of this monster sized thread. I posted this a few days ago on the beta forum but only had the occasional spider investigating it, ready to weave a cobweb over it so I came over here to get some answers..

1.) Can I use another shader? Are there plans to include other shader support? The way I understand it from skimming the mountain of a thread, in order to make it work with a different shader, say, pwtoon, I would have to export it as obj then apply the shader to it. It would be really nice if you could change the shader within daz studio. Plug in a shader preset, for example. That would be awesome
2.) Can you change the style and return? The reason I ask this is that I have a webcomic in the making that has a character who can literally control his hair and make it do anything, including change lengths, grab things and he can even walk with it. Is there a workaround to do this? Say two systems, one "prop" and one normal, and able to hide the one not in use? Previously I used zed hair but that didn't match up with his default hair very well. You could tell that there was two hairs. (I'm condering just using zed at this point so it looks better and I can move it without using magnets.) I'm thinking something similar to Tangled in a way. I'm sure they had something quite similar to this system.
3.) How would the fur work as an obj? would it need rigged or what?

 

I've been recently playing with it, since I have time, and it reminds me of Blender's hair tool, so it's not unfamiliar to me. I really like how the cut tool works, really innovative. Overall, I've done a simple shoulder length, that resembles my own hair, but it's kinda blowing in the wind at the moment. Can anyone send me give me some pointers on it?

 

Thanks!

1) Yes you can apply any other shaders to the hair, you select the styling curves in the daz viewport in the surfaces tab select the surface and then apply any shader you desire. Eg AoA Subsurface, UberSurface, UberSurface2, any of them should work as they usually do. Of course results will vary depending on what you do just like fibermesh hair.

2) Changing a style is easy done, with all the tools in garibaldi. But reverting those changes is not possible. Undo will only go back so far and I dont think it will remember what was changed if leave the GH window. But a solution would be select the hair and save it as either a Wearable Preset or Scene Subset, then you can load the asset at anytime, exactly how it was when you saved it. To make it easier when making them if you want them all in the same scene, you can use the Edit>Duplicate Node feature which will clone the object, so you can edit it without affecting the original.

3) I have used the Export to OBJ feature allot for use in Iray, it is heavy on hardware, I wouldnt recomend it for full animal fur, but with careful optimization such as low density and low intopolation (Segment Length) which is the OBJ vert count, your computer will be able to handle it better. I do not like OBJ as its very intensive on resources. But for Iray its just the only way. As such Daz doesnt cope very well at all in rigging Fibermesh hair, I advise you pose you character or creature update the hair in the Setup tab then export the hair. That OBJ will match the figures geometry perfectly, so long as you dont move the figure.

Hope that helps you :)

I'm sorry, I am not going to read all of this monster sized thread. I posted this a few days ago on the beta forum but only had the occasional spider investigating it, ready to weave a cobweb over it so I came over here to get some answers..

1.) Can I use another shader? Are there plans to include other shader support? The way I understand it from skimming the mountain of a thread, in order to make it work with a different shader, say, pwtoon, I would have to export it as obj then apply the shader to it. It would be really nice if you could change the shader within daz studio. Plug in a shader preset, for example. That would be awesome
2.) Can you change the style and return? The reason I ask this is that I have a webcomic in the making that has a character who can literally control his hair and make it do anything, including change lengths, grab things and he can even walk with it. Is there a workaround to do this? Say two systems, one "prop" and one normal, and able to hide the one not in use? Previously I used zed hair but that didn't match up with his default hair very well. You could tell that there was two hairs. (I'm condering just using zed at this point so it looks better and I can move it without using magnets.) I'm thinking something similar to Tangled in a way. I'm sure they had something quite similar to this system.
3.) How would the fur work as an obj? would it need rigged or what?

I've been recently playing with it, since I have time, and it reminds me of Blender's hair tool, so it's not unfamiliar to me. I really like how the cut tool works, really innovative. Overall, I've done a simple shoulder length, that resembles my own hair, but it's kinda blowing in the wind at the moment. Can anyone send me give me some pointers on it?

Thanks!

off-topic: timmins, your webcomic seems interesting. A nice little scifi story :) I'm only on page 7 it really looks cool. I'm starting my own webcomic, been slowly buying up things for it and working on the characters. I've posted a few images on the forum but I post almost everything on my DA. Feel free to poke around. I like using pwtoon myself. reminds me of my drawing days. :)

To get the sort of effect shown in those images you posted (which presumably were done in Carrara not DS) I would use PWToon which only works with the 3delight renderer.

I'm sure it's possible to come up with something like that without pw toon. (I got the whole package on sale when they upgraded to daz 3. The only one I don't use is catch.)  Back when the daz update broke it I tried playing with the new shader mixer with some interesting results, the best of which is here with this render. I used my current character back then he is h3 based. You can see more attempts by looking for the other Aden as Alex in this deviant art folder.  I wound up quitting that version of my comic since daz ate my save files. However I loaded the old h4 based Alex to get his hair magnets so maybe it's not a total loss. The reboot is much better. Lunacy of Xade will be along the same theme but with a much better storyline and special effects. Keep an eye on my main site or deviant art for updates, tho I'll update on the main site first. 

Cool .. would you explain to us how to get those render? Im always interesting and keep looking another method to produce something like yours beside using "famous" toon shader like PWToon-  Visual Shaders or OLD JGL toon shaders

Hi,

Thanks for the answer.

The editor tab is not what I'm looking for however. I would like to edit some of the properties of the shader itself:

I'm using PWtoon and I would like to add a seperate controler for the opacity of the outline. Right now, that isn't there.

Also I'd like to change the behaviour of the outline: when to draw it, and when not to draw it.

Thanks a lot,

Me

gibrril said:

thanks for the replies. I'm rendering in 3Dlifgt.

PWtoon isn't working... I'm using them together with Crescents Cel Shaders.

Thanks a lot,

Me

PWToon is working for me , when you say Crescents Cel Shaders do you mean the PWToon presets, I think I have them.

thanks for the replies. I'm rendering in 3Dlifgt.

PWtoon isn't working... I'm using them together with Crescents Cel Shaders.

Thanks a lot,

Me

The main reason I go with textures is to add detail. but I keep it simple. A simple picture on a tshirt, for example, or pocket and collar details on the policeman uniforms. Nothing fancy like a cloth weave (what I used in the above example) and certainly no bump map overlay. Hair is always kind of tricky. the best kind to use for a pwtoon is the toon style hair, not the normal hair unless you remove all iner lines and stuff. I like keeping the inner line off and the outer line thin enough to add definition but not thick enough to take away from the image, like I did with this wip of a female character in the v4 body suit.

She's a super hero in my comic and shhhh, she wears a body armor that she turns parts of it invisible so it looks better. I'm not 100% sold on venom hair for her but the costume is coming along well enough. She is loosely based off of a violet siamese cat. Once the basic texture is done I will work on the suit surfaces to make it look a more like a super hero outfit. Although I might add some nice pattern effect. I just parked a light in there and rendered. Her name is Invisicat, and she can turn anything touching her invisible. I havent put them in a scene or anything yet, ive been working on characters at the moment, and of course the basic storyline. She is barefoot because I am waiting on the suit's expansion pack to go on sale again. I kind of ran out of money and the last sale just wasnt long enough. :P She isnt due to appear for at least chapter 2 but I want to get her outfit and texture done.

I'm also not sure about her fur color transition. So far I havent been very happy with it. Maybe I'll just go for a medium color line like the bunny. What do you think? Should I go for a hard line, mid color transition or softer one? (I'm not quite done with her face markings :P)

Sockratease said:

Interesting render there, zilvergrafix! Thanks.

I was referring to Toon Render Styles using things like PWToon or whatever the current equivalent is - but that's nice to see regardless.

Thanks for the post :)

There is an example of stylized render in the forum probably AtticAnn rendering LF Star, I don't remember. I believe that Iray have a lot of "well defined" light just to cut and use in stylized-crazy experiments. I'm reading about MDL to try a couple of ideas.

PW Toon can do something pretty close but you really got to know what you're doing with it. here's a sample of my pwtoon renders. Mind you, I was going for a soft cell approach, but I have seen something close to the above examples. Edit, I changed it to a different one with same character that showed more detail. I also wanted a nice looking hair on my hare. :) (He's a bunny, not a hare, which are born completely independant, but I couldnt resist that joke)

DestinysGarden said:

Sockratease said:

Interesting render there, zilvergrafix! Thanks.

I was referring to Toon Render Styles using things like PWToon or whatever the current equivalent is - but that's nice to see regardless.

Thanks for the post :)

I'm thinking it must be possible to develop a toon style or cell shaded type of shader for Iray, and on my list to try to figure out. It still feels slightly "nuts" to want to use Iray to render toons, but that makes me one of the biggest "nuts" then, because I've already done a whole set of Iray toon eyes.

Sockratease said:

Interesting render there, zilvergrafix! Thanks.

I was referring to Toon Render Styles using things like PWToon or whatever the current equivalent is - but that's nice to see regardless.

Thanks for the post :)

I'm thinking it must be possible to develop a toon style or cell shaded type of shader for Iray, and on my list to try to figure out. It still feels slightly "nuts" to want to use Iray to render toons, but that makes me one of the biggest "nuts" then, because I've already done a whole set of Iray toon eyes.

PWToon or Visual Style don't work in Iray.

Sockratease said:

Interesting render there, zilvergrafix! Thanks.

I was referring to Toon Render Styles using things like PWToon or whatever the current equivalent is - but that's nice to see regardless.

Thanks for the post :)

Interesting render there, zilvergrafix! Thanks.

I was referring to Toon Render Styles using things like PWToon or whatever the current equivalent is - but that's nice to see regardless.

Thanks for the post :)

I saved the entire file as a duf, the whole character. From the base hiro 4 to the outfit he was wearing with the pwtoon shader. I am using Hiro 4, based off of Michael 4, since I dont have any recent clothing and the 4th gen is pretty cheap. I am using the Michael 4 policeman uniform, and the character has the a3 bunny tail, to prevent poke through on the cuffs pouch I sent it to hexagon, moved it to the left side, since he is a left hander any way, and sent the file back. I finished texturing things saved the file, closed daz for the night and went to bed. the next day I loaded the file and noticed it was sitting very loosely on his hips. The policeman's belt had lost the "cuff left" morph and the Hiro4 morph, defaulting to the Michael 4 shape.

So, I need to know how to keep the hexagon based morphs, or how to inject them for later use in a future version

Death Z said:

http://www.daz3d.com/pwtoon

Is there anything like this for poser, or possibly any way to make this work with poser pro?

Poser has a toon render capability built in.

Masterstroke said:

See, I'd like to go the opposite way: Go and dump 3delight. I allways have been struggeling with DS, also because of 3delight. I've never made it to get anything better, than a cr*py Poser4-like render out of it. With IRAY, DAZStudio suddenley makes sense. It is like someone had finally found the lightswitch. ;)
IRay is much faster than 3delight, and it looks better. If it was about me, forget 3del... what is it called? never mind.

Only if you have a Nvidia card and if you want to do large scenes a really big Nvidia card. And as to it looks better for some perhaps but not all I'm seeing some really bad Iray renders.
PWToon etc etc don't work in Iray; 3Delight is still better for a more illustrated look than Iray - just because you struggled with 3Delight doesn't mean it should be ditched - is it really so much to ask - 1 render in 3Delight.