DS Cartoon Render groundplane issue

BlackFeather1973

When using the Cartoon Render option, the groundplane renders black. For the groundplane i'm using a primitive plane with a texturemap. Changing the angle between the plane and the camera, by either tilting the plane or the camera shows there's some sort of falloff zone where the plane renders black.
All surfaces are Daz Studio Default Shader, lit with a single distant light and i'm using DS4.5.1.56 (64bit).

Any ideas ?

Richard Haseltine

As I understand it the shader uses the angle to decide where to put the outline - so when the whole surface is at an acute angle to the line of sight the whole surface ends up as outline. pwToon suffers this less, and is more adjustable, plus you can simply not use the toon sahder on the ground if you use a per-surface approach with shaders rather than using the render mode switch. You could also make the ground a separate pass, with different settings, then place the figure on top of it.

BlackFeather1973

Thanks Richard. I was using the cartoon render so i wouldn't have to apply separate shaders, for a quick series of renders.
I'll check if i have a cartoon shader in my library that let's me keep the texture map.

Scott Livingston

You could experiment with using a ground plane that has displacement (or applying displacement to it). That method rescued one of my cartoon renders. The plane was still mostly black, but it had a nice textured look.

BlackFeather1973

Thanks, Scott-Livingston. That did give some interesting results, although the groundplane became a little too prominent.
I solved by using a different shader on the groundplane, the cartoon render only takes the daz default shader into account and skips other shaders.