Using DAZ to create line drawing models

ezekieljoseej303

My project is to create hundreds of line art drawings of gym exercises. I could draw them by hand in illustrator, but perhaps I would save time using a human 3D model in DAZ? I could render it to a PNG image, and trace the outline of it in Illustrator. Or does DAZ have a filter that could produce the line drawing directly?

How would you do it in the most effective way? Most scenes would be a human with some simple objects like a barbell and a bench. See below picture for an example of what I want to achieve. I'm not specifically tied to DAZ, so if Poser or any other tool has this function, that would work too. Thanks for any tips.

Richard Haseltine

There are several toon and other non-photoreal shaders, mostly for 3Delight (but if you don't want photoreal renders Iray isn't going to eb much of a benefit). pwToon is literally toons.

MarcCCTx

https://www.sharecg.com/v/69733/view/21/daz-studio/crescents-pwtoon-cel-shaders

These are freebie shaders used with PWToon. (3 line width presets and either Cel Shading or Soft Shading) 

edit: theese render in seconds

If you need more detail you can keep the original texture. This is PWToon Snazzy render holding the Ctrl key to keep the texture.

Catherine3678ab

You might like this shader, it is for use with Iray. Nice manual explains how to get the lines.

https://www.daz3d.com/oso-toon-shader-for-iray

 

mindsong

There's also the powerful LR9000 line rendering toolkit for the DAZ 3Delight render engine:

   https://www.daz3d.com/linerender9000

It's quite powerful/capable, and can be used in concert with the other mentioned tools and composited together. The complexity comes from its ability to generate a variety of lines/styles in many different contexts (e.g. leaves, vs clothes, hair, etc.) where a line-style that works well for part of a scene really doesn't work for other parts - this tool lets you adjust both/all parts. But... you have to do that adjusting process. That said, the defaults work pretty well, and the control is there if you need/want it.

The mentioned oso-toon-shader-for-iray is similarly powerful, capable, and complex for the same reasons.

For some of these tools, you can render just the lines to PNG image files using no backgrounds in the scene and you'll get just the lines (only) that can be easily overlayed in most photo-editing tools.

If you animate, image sequences - PNG or JPEG w solid colored (usually black) backgrounds - can also be finessed into the outlined effect you want, but the particular workflow method depends on the video editor you use, etc.

@MarcCCTx - Those renders are quite nice in the style choices you've made - well-done!

cheers,

--ms