Comic Book/Toon DAZ to Blender render work flow

Levonas

Quick video showing how to take a set up from DAZ3D and bringing it over to Blender to use the blender render, toon rendering, and freestyle to achieve a comic book / toon drawn and inked look. Very basic, very clean look.
For some reason there are a few audio pops so I apologize in advance. I tried multiple times but pops occurred anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIKvoz9wNBw

Levonas

Here is an example of what just a small amount of time can produce for you with the steps in the video. I brought the image into GIMP to do the background and erased two lines that show up due to freestyle stroking even on completely transparent material (ahem, freestyle coders, can we get an update to stroke borders on only visible edges please? lol).
The rest of the image is untouched post render. The man, the guns, all 100% a product of the render only.
Click for a larger view.

Levonas

And then there was a bad guy...a few line touch ups in GIMP but yet another example of the work flow's results.

juve_satriani

Excellent !!! I`ve seen your video . Seems easy to follow . I dont know if Blender could import DAZ shader or PW TOON :) BTW since pwToon is work in DAZ and most toon style seem doesnt need realistic lights , Im curious what main reason we should rendering in Blender ?? Render Speed ?? Or for easy integrating with other prop models which made using blender ?? Thanks !!!

Do you have comic site? I would love to study from you

Levonas

I am glad you found some use, even if only for work flow theory.
I noticed that when I do not apply pwToon prior to export, I do not get the desired results with the render in Blender.
I do enjoy pwToon in DAZ, however, the line art control in freestyle is a step above what DAZ and pwToon offer. The shading control is more fine tuned as well in Blender so I get more of my desired result without a lot of, or sometimes any, post processing.
I tend to do a little more work with lighting (not as intricate other people) but to get the desired looks I do mess around in Blender's lighting to get nice looking shadows and such with the comic renders.
The render speed really is not much of an issue to be honest. Blender only takes longer when there is a lot of geometry and it is mapping out the strokes in freestyle rendering.
I do also do touch ups on the models such as sculpting to get deeper creases in skin for nicer looking renders. At times I will also have to adjust clothing or other touch ups or create additions to models which is simple in Blender since I am used to it versus Hexagon.
I actually appreciate the simple flow I can have between scene setup and posing in DAZ to touch ups and rendering in Blender. Those two make life easy!
I did a concept that shows more lighting and shadow play that I am referring to here;
http://levonas.deviantart.com/art/Tony-Maye-and-Animus-First-Face-to-Face-Concept-436300104
I do see a few things I would adjust in a final render as being the artist I am the most critical of my work, but for now it is just a concept for a graphic novel that I am waiting and bugging the writer to get moving on at least the first volume...or the first page at that!
That is where I will post my renders as I do them for the fun of it.
So there is nothing wrong in the DAZ rendering, I just like the control and final results in Blender's freestyle more.

juve_satriani

Thanks for detail explanations . I saw your image and its look great . Hope you`ll soon finish your graphic novel ;)

Most of the time I`m using 3D render as base layer before doing some fun with Photoshop ( brush, color corrections , FX filter ) . But I would love to had knowledge to produce toon base render close enough with my final style I want , so I could focus my time for writing . However information and knowledge to pushing 3D toon/anime/cel shader renders seems very limited even for other BIG BOYS software like Max or Maya or SoftImage , so I would like to thanks for sharing your workflow here .

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