SereneNight's Sci-fi Fun

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  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651

    Hah I get it now....=-) it probably was meant to convey motion but could be lower I agree

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651
    edited March 2018

    I was asked to write up a brief tutorial on rendering a quick toony character. To use the tutorial you will need:

    1. Colm Jackson's Jackson's Render Studio Pro Studio HDRI HDRILight002R or equivalent bright evenly lit hdri

    2. A toony looking figure with flat undetailed skin. A toony looking hair. And uncomplicated clothing.

    3. Topaz Studio. (Free) and Photoshop.

     

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  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651

    Reserved for Page 2

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651
    edited March 2018

    Making a Toon Render in PS with DAZ And With Topaz Studio

    1. Load your character. Choose a skin without a lot of blemishes, bodyhair, or physical detail. A  nice smooth toony skin. Something not too fair, in the mid-tone range.

    2. Accentuate the toony quality of the figure. Broaden shoulders, make hands bigger, eyes longer, muscles more mighty, expression more vivid, waist more narrow etc.. If your character doesn't look toony, it wont look toony if you filter it.

    3. Choose a hair that is more helmety than you might if you were going for realism. 

    4. Clothing should be flatly textured. Highly ornate detailed clothing should be avoided. Textures that ornate will react with the PS filter. You can recolor clothing flatter if you like.

    5. Use a light that is High Key and bright. We don't want shadows here.  The trick is we want to turn the shadows kinda brown.   I use Colm Jackson's Render Studio Pro Studio HDRI HDRILight002R Set burn highlights to about .50  evironmental intensity should be about 3.50

    6. Don't make the character too small. Characters should be bigger to show detail.

    7. Pose and Render in Canvas mode or with a white background. Backgrounds should be avoided at this stage, because the filter will accentuate whatever you use. You can add it later. (By the way if you are looking for some good toon expressions, download my male expression set.)

    Here's my results. Both guys are actually Darwin's Mishap's Giueseppe's shape lots of muscles and longer eyes added. I didn't use his nice skin, because I don't want details or realism I want flat toony skin. You'l see Colms' lighting is excellent for this skin, bringing out nice highlights with the burn but not blowing it out white.

    8. Make sure you Own a copy of Topaz Studio. Its free.

     

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  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651

    9. Complete render and save as png. If you made it in canvas it will be transparent as the one above. Load into PS.

    10. Topaz Studio. Search for two filters in the community  that have been uploaded. One is called Larry, the other is called Blackandwhitebarn Both these should work well. Make sure to heart them. If you want to save those filters, which I always do, you will need to alter them ever so slightly for the save offline option to appear on the right. Do that.

    10. Apply and tweak your render in PS. Add a background if you desire in layer mode.

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651
    edited March 2018

    This is BlackandWhiteBarn filter

    I used the filter only on the foreground characers. I used a backdrop for the background.

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  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651
    edited March 2018

    This is the Larry filter. Its a bit brighter than BlackandWhitebarn but I use it just as much, even though it might not be right for every render

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  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651
    edited March 2018

    Okay, so now back to the Boyd and Owen show! =-) I hope you all find this helpful as this is one of the ways of achieving toonification... obviously play with your picture to darken and lighten as needed

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  • Carola OCarola O Posts: 3,823

    Always enjoy watching your thread and renders Serene, even if I don't comment much :) And have to say, Topaz is amazing.. the more I use it the more I wonder how I managed without it *grins* and I stil have so much to learn about it too hahah

    Going to try your toon tutorial when I have a picture fitting for it, it looks interesting :)

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651

    Cool! Glad to hear you like the thread and hope you enjoy the tutorial. :-)

  • RGcincyRGcincy Posts: 2,834

    thanks for the tutorial! I need to learn more about filters as they look to be quite useful

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651

    This is a relatively easy effect to achieve with the right tools. =-)

    Topaz studio can be downloaded here:

    https://web.topazlabs.com/

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887

    Topaz Labs has always been a great resource, a lot of varied options. Love the motion of the swing render, it's really fun! 

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651
    edited March 2018

    It's wash day and things get a bit out of hand, when Boyd is determined to impress Owen with his homemaking abilities and Owen decides to sneak down and get a head start on the laundry.

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  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651
    edited March 2018

    I wasn't entirely happy with these daffodils, but they were all I could find. this was a request for Daffodils in the snow. As you can see, Boyd is quite anxious to receive his flowers. =-)

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  • Carola OCarola O Posts: 3,823
    edited March 2018

    The laundry accident made me both laugh and cringe, laugh for the humor in it and cringe for the pain at hitting the floor :) The daffodil one is so cute!

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  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651
    edited March 2018

    Thanks. Well in Boyd’s defense those soap bottles for some reason appear to have no labels so he likely just put way too much in. He was busy mopping up when Owen hit a patch of wet and skidded into him. It gave  me the opportunity to dforce Boyd’s favorite  blue underwear and that sock. 

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  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651
    edited March 2018

    Owen challenges Boyd to a race on their new Fatbikes. Yeah, I never know how to make the HDRI look less like a photo. I try... But do not always succeed.

    The fatbike is a great deal of fun. You can change its color quite easily to make them look different.

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  • RGcincyRGcincy Posts: 2,834

    Perfect setting for a ride! Hope they have plenty of water

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,249

    Great work on the bike render. I love the posing.

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    Love the laundry render, great posing and attention to detail!

    And the bike render is gorgeous. 

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887

    It's wash day and things get a bit out of hand, when Boyd is determined to impress Owen with his homemaking abilities and Owen decides to sneak down and get a head start on the laundry.

     

    That's really funny, and agreed, apart from the OUCH of hitting the floor. 

  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887
    edited March 2018

    Owen challenges Boyd to a race on their new Fatbikes. Yeah, I never know how to make the HDRI look less like a photo. I try... But do not always succeed.

    Are you adding 3D objects to the set, like plants? (Is that one bush 3d that's behind them? Or a shadow postworked in?)  I think it looks fine, but you can always add more real vegetation in the foreground/ to the side of the folks if you're not happy with it. 

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  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651
    edited March 2018

    I don’t like renders to have hdri that look like photos. For some reason I dislike a photo with a 3d character in the foreground because they don’t match. I usually depth of field or postwork  the hdri to avoid that issue.

     

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  • Phoenix1966Phoenix1966 Posts: 1,681
    edited March 2018

    The laundry one is a great mini story (and I love the framed picture of them together on the back wall).

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  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651

    Thanks! The laundry image is a reprisal of an earlier laundry image also in my gallery where Owen is ironing. I used the same environment, and added updated pictures and changed the perspective.  In the original image there were photos of the boys and so I chose to redo that with more recent pics.

    I actually no longer like the look of earlier Owen and Boyd. blush The originals look a bit funky to me now. But they are popular and they remain in the gallery until I can't stand it any longer.

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,651
    edited March 2018

    Boyd actually uses an app to propose to Owen initially...Owen says yes, but with the condition Boyd has to pop the question in person. Boyd has to wait several years before he can.

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  • Carola OCarola O Posts: 3,823

    Lovely render Serene, I love the attityde in that latest. And of course, always lovely to see them take their relation to the next step :)

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 18,142
    edited March 2018

    Your toon renders & other renders keep getting better & better.

    Back from India & Germany and so just saw the daffodils render. Thanks. The daffodils started blooming here on about the 22 of February and yes, they are currently blooming in the snow!

    India was fun but I wound up with streptococcal infection that has managed to migrate from my throat to my right ear to my sinus to my lungs in one short week. Eating at communal kitchens without 180 degree F automated dishwashers are not a wise choice! More than 1/2 the people there were infected, natives & foreigners alike! Ugh!

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  • NovicaNovica Posts: 23,887

    @nonesuch00  Hope you feel better soon.

    I thought those two were flipping the bird when I first scrolled down!  Interesting app approach, very clever. 

     

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