Comic Book style rendering
Drogo Nazhur
Posts: 1,157
What rendering options should I use (IRAY? 3Delight? etc?) to achieve a more flat / comic book style look?
Post edited by Drogo Nazhur on
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There are ways:
1) There is the built-in toon renderer in DAZ Studio.
and 3 products in the DAZ Store (there are more):
2) https://www.daz3d.com/visual-style-shaders
3) https://www.daz3d.com/manga-style-shaders
4) https://www.daz3d.com/pwtoon
Another way to flatten the detail from a scene is to set the exposure setting in the Tone Mappings to a low value or use way too much light in a scene but those methods aren't very good.
There is also Toonycam Pro https://www.daz3d.com/camera-magic-toonycam-pro it does work but it is a hit and miss affair.. The other is Linerender 9000 https://www.daz3d.com/linerender9000 and is very good but can be complicated.. The other option is ot do normal renders and postwork them in third party apps which there are many to choose from..
I haven't purchased it yet, but I've also had my eye on:
https://www.daz3d.com/sketchy-toon-edge-and-art-style-shaders-for-iray
At the moment, I use FotoSketcher (it's free) and Gimp (likewise) to do my toon-ifying in post work.
I myself have found it much easier to do the Tooning in postwork, I have Pastello, Moku Hanga and Spektrel Art from Jixipix, I have found Topaz Studio is good found a really great setting in that one.. I have that Iray product but it is a lot of work to get it looking right..
I have personally used pwToon and I like it and I can render in 3DL or iRay with it and it looks good because since it's a toon style minimal calculations are done to render a scene.
The free built-in DAZ Toon style is also good but requires more surfaces setup work than pwToon - although pwToon does require surfaces setup too so far I like the pwToon results better.
Really? I haven't used it for a while, but I know it predates iRay, so I thought it would be all messed up
I use either pwToon or Photoshop actions to create the 2D/drawn look. If you decide to use pwToon I have a freebie with a ton of shader presets for it: pwToon_CelShaders_r2.zip
I would say 3DL, and use postwork in conjunction with minimalist rendering.
plenty of information in this thread on comics. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/36615/comics/p1
Wow - many thanks!
Yeah, I use Visual Style Shaders in 3Delight. I have bought some IRAY toon shaders, but they look more like a pixar film than a comic book. I also use Photoshop, Topaz Simplicity, and Cip Paint Studio (Manga Studio) for postwork.
Here are two threads who should check out.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/36615/comics#latest
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/54697/non-photorealistic-renders-npr#latest
Yes, it looked fine but not as good as 3DL as they looked plasticine. They are autoconverted, but I was wrong about the render being fast although it's faster than if I'd kept the original PBR settings; however choosing 3Delight as the renderer makes the render almost instantaneously fast (well not really, but compared to realistic renders).
The attached renders are made with
pwToon (aa Cartoon Classic, ab Toon Noir, ac --Neutral--, ad Striking Outline, ae Technical Drawing)
DS Defaults (af DS Defaults - Toon) - free with DAZ Studio
Crescent Toon (ag - Crescent Soft Shaders Thin, ah Crescent Cel Shaders Thick) - free from Crescent (she posted earlier at sharecg.com)
Key thing to remember is DS Defaults and Crescent Presets overwrite & erase any texture maps present while pwToon does not. You can always type <Control>-LMB on the toon shader preset and DAZ Studio will show a popup & on that for the images dropdown choose ignore and than the images on that surface won't be overwritten.
You can and should select each surface that is defined to apply a toon shader preset to. You can turn on the Geometry Editor and combine that with the Face Group and Surfaces Editor to define new surfaces to get your toon renders more details if you need too.
The renders altogether took less than 5 minutes, all 8 of them and I rushed to change the shader presets on them & made no adjustments so what you see is very fast to set up and can be improved to your personal tastes if you like.
Attached Left to Right: aa - ah as written above.
EDIT: I left an important preset style off the list & point out I did not do all the preset styles available for those products.
pwToon (ai - Comic Book Light B+W)
I believe there is a product in the DAZ Store that does comic book style color halftone dithering but I don't own that product to show you an example.
@nonesuch00, thanks a bunch for that comparison series. It captures the general flavor of each tool quite well.
That said, as I've explored these tools, it's worth noting that *each* of these tools has a good number of adjustments that can be made that can dramatically change the result. Most have adjustments for light and shdow colors, as well as how sharp the transition is between that light and dark edge. In addition, changing the lighting (e.g. from a soft-light HDR to a distant-light like the sun) may completely alter the nature of the shadow edges in most of these packages. Further, some toon shaders don't even respond to lights at all and will render wonderfully *without lights* using ambient settings. Some of these tools have outline features that relate to camera angles/normals relative to that target, and others outline objects and their separate parts using 'IDs' or identfier tagging techniques.
It's a bit of a trick to get all of them under control, but the common themes start to bubble up, and pretty soon you're controlling it... sort of.
Bottom line - although there are a collection of great comparison samples above - they are a great way to get a feel for the various tools presented, but... I would bet that someone else would come up with an equally useful, but very different set of renders from the exact same tools using their own way of setting them up. It would be simply impossible to render/demo them all (nonesuch00's series are decent representative presets - beyond that you could render your life away playing with the settings and lighting options...)
As mentioned above, browse the active comic/NPR threads and you can gather huge amounts of insights from these masters - and you might find that one of the tools used to make a render up above that you don't like is the very tool being used by some else to achieve exactly the look you do want. It's worth mentioning that the term 'comic style renders' has as much variation as there are styles of coffee. Perhaps a post of the style you are liking may draw specific tool and setup recommendations from the fine folks in here. There are some amazingly clever and generous folks in these parts. Some spend most of their posting over at deviant art, and a simple toon/DAZ search will likely yield a wealth of iamges, tips, advice, and tutorials.
Personally, I'm working with pwtoon and Visual-Style for figures, and the toony-cam-pro for backgrounds. I haven't gotten to the post-work options, but really like the results I'm seeing from a few folks here. There's some absolutely brilliant illustrative stuff going on in a Carrara NPR thread that blows my mind.
Cheers, (and let us know how it goes!)
--ms
How to apply this file?
Lozel, you want the free G'MIC filter set.
Keep in mind that "comic book" can fall into a lot of different styles, but you can achieve some decent results without buying anything.
This is a real quick image that I threw together as an example. No special renderers used.
Rendered one time using the Beauty Canvas. Took that Canvas into Photoshop (but I believe Gimp can do all of this). Worked on the exposure settings to get the "night" levels right.
Made four layers with it.
Bottom layer, black and white.
Next layer, over saturated color. Set this to a Luminsity overlay.
Next layer, black and white, find edges, inverted. Set this to a Divide overlay.
Top layer, Guassian blur.
Then worked with the layers opacities until it approximated what it should look like.
The main thing is to visualize the style you want to get to, then think about how to get there. The colors for most comics are going to be uniform shades, so you need to blur your color levels to get there. The edges will be pronounced, which is what a good black and white / find edges accomplishes.
After all is said and done, it doesn't hurt to add some last flourishes manually. To accent the image and make the drawing look more authentic.
I like the cartoon filters at befunky online editor https://www.befunky.com/create/
Those are neat. I never even knew that that existed.
I also had a stand alone program that was able to mock a bunch of different painting / painter styles. Auto something or other. I lost it when my last computer died and never felt the need to recover it.
Bloody hell; i was interested in this, then realised I own it.
Nice Job
Thanks!
But seriously, you don't need fancy tools to get there. You just need to not be afraid to experiment.
I agree, experimentation always delivers new possibilities.
Various DS 3Delight passes, layered in photo program.
Very nice. I have found skin to be the hardest part to get right in a comic render.
I don't think I explained my layer reasoning properly, my apologies. It was after work and I was mentally exhausted.
First, I use Iray because I am used to it 3DL renders will work almost exactly the same. I like to use the Canvas-Beauty canvas because I can fiddle with the overall lighting after the fact. I just have to be sure of the balance of the different lights in the scene.
Layer One - Bottom
This is a black and white layer. Think of this as the inked pages. No color yet. Its the base that all the other layers work off. Almost like what would be done in a real setting. This is where fancy things like shading and styling, removing details, can be fun.
Layer Two - One up from Bottom
This is an over saturated color layer. Make this layer by working with the color levels and upping the saturation. Essentially its a color "beyond" what reality would look like. Used for the color highlights.
Layer Three - Two up from Bottom
This is a black and white layer, that gets inverted, and use the Find Edges filter on. This is meant to make the edges of the objects more pronounced, like they would be in an actual drawing. That's why it goes "over" the saturated colors.
Layer Four - "Top"
This is another, almost standard, color layer. Applying a Gaussian (or other blur) will smooth out color details that the render creates.This makes a more uniform color with only minor gradients.
Blending
This is where most of the experimentation will come in and why this is all done in layers. Try different blending styles; sometimes Darken will work best, other times Overlay will. The only hard rule is with the "Find Edges" layer. This needs to use something that will make the Edges stay pronounced.
Lastly the Opacity level will control how much of each layer appears.
Playing with each of these can create some very effective interactions.
Extra Credit
Beyond the basics there are things like selectively erasing parts of the image on only certain layers. Like having just the character in color and the background black and white outline. Blurring the Find Edges layer to give the border lines a more rushed look or to create motion.
If working with skin, it doesn't hurt to apply a base color without any texture details, particularly for distant figures. A comic book is generally not going to include pores and freckles if the character is not in a close up pose.
Last Thoughts
The only reason I frown on fancy tools, plug ins, and renders is because every picture is different. No one method is going to work like magic for every image rendered.
However, if you take the process in steps, understanding why you are doing each, then you will know how to compensate for the differences. In the process you will create your own "drawing style" which is essential if you are creating a sequence of comic images. You want them all to look like they were drawn by the same person, giving a consistency to the overall project.
Not to disparage the extra tools, but using them will make it harder to create your own "look."