Feedback on Toon Style shading.
kwannie
Posts: 870
I stuck this in another thread but felt it was burried so I deleted and started new thread. Just wanted to get opinions on this "toon style" shading. I have attached an animation that I created from an MMD motion that I converted to BVH, and used my own DAZ dialed character mix, with a hodge podge of clothing items that I had. The toon effect is done with "Sketchy - Toon Edge and Art Style Shaders for Iray" Is the overall effect convincing for animation?
MMD rules only require crediting the original creators in order to use motion, sound or model files in order to use those assets so the motion and sound track credit is below:
motion by hino
Music: Yuka Tsuji ♡ .Onegai Darling Ver.
Let me know what you think.................
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Comments
I think that looks really good! Nicely done! :)
Thank you 3Diva, I really value input from others. My eye is not objective enough for my own work.
You'll likely be able to get more feedback if you upload it to a video hosting site like Vimeo, Dailymotion, or Youtube and share the link or video here. People are quite a bit less likely to download a zip and unpack it to watch a video than they are to simply click a link to a video. :) Just IMO, of course. :)
So far I think the style looks good! :D I hope you post more of your work with the NPR Style/Toon Style shading when you do more.
Thank you again 3Diva, and since you mention it did you like the MMD style motion? I know I was seeking feedback on the shading but since DAZ never gets its' fair due on animation capabilities I'm glad to hear you liked it.
What I like about using DAZ with this format is that I can change characters on the fly ( Body Shape, age, texture, hair clothes...........) after I convert the motion to an aniblock I can just drop the motion on any other character I choose ( generation speciffic of course) I actually hate registering on new sites so thats why I use the zip format. I have been posting here for years and have never been tagged for sharing anything malicious, if that helps anyone.
I have no problem posting other works if you like to see them. As a matter of fact I have one I'll add here but I need to link to the sound because it is cpyrighted for this one
This one is not toon shaded but it easily could be made that way in DAZ.
I think the black outlines need to be thinner in some places as you can make them or replaced with the 3 shades darker boundary color that is longest for the interior color but you shading still looks good.
Thanks nonesuch, Are you familiar with using Sketchy? I tried to use the thinnest outline shader that it offers but for some reason when something moves just above parallel to the horizon the lines seem to get thicker. I used the standard non gradient Environment Map and a single spotlight just to the side of the of the character to get the shadow molding effect. Overall I think it acheives the traditional toon effect but it does get outline thickening at odd places. I also noticed that the outlines only appear on the outside of the character, for example the socks have outlines on the outside but not along the top of the socks. The toon shaders also seem to speed up rendering a bit.
Yes, but I noticed that with your current animation. In shorts all those thin black boundary lines got to close together in parallel and combined to make black blobs for a fraction of a second. That why I wondered if you could change the colors of the boundary lines to match the interior colors but be about 3 - 5 (or more) shads darker. I have Sketchy but have never used it. It's impressive from your animation.
Did you know nVidia is adding a cartoon shader to iRay directly? It will be in DAZ Studio probably before next summer.
Oh that is cool, I love toon and sketch style. I also was playing with the outline output of scripted 3dlight which will give the ability to create an image series of only the outline of a figure. I could not ever find any video editing software that reads image series in tiff format. I attached a sample of the files below. I also have Line Render 9000 but I have never learned how to use it.
I paid closer attention to what you suggested. I tend to prefer the stark black outline but I just adjusted the toon diffuse contrast setting in the surfaces tabs and it seem to cut back some of the blobbing up in places. There are many many adjustments that can be made in surfaces. I'm really liking the results that Sketchy yeilds. I love that you can adjust the draw styles inside of the lines, lends itself to a vey nice black and white render.
Sorry, I had a typo or was trying to think of a couple unrelated things and answer at the same time but I think you'll get the problem resolved.
3Diva You said you would like to see more NPR Style/Toon so I attached another vid I made using the same character from before. I adjusted the toon diffuse contrast setting after applying the Sketchy shader, so the outlines are not so noticeable, but the blobbiness is gone. Comments and suggestions are welcome......please!
motion : HOPHEAD 公開ファイル
The soundtrak is in the link below
This outline is by normal vectors, then in certain angles a big amount of the geometry with low curvature becomes black, there isn't a way to solve this. Toonycam pro and line render have other method to implement outlines that avoid this problems and outlines are very detailed.
An examples of toonycam:
That looks very interesting GiGi, but I can't seem to find toonycam in the store anymore. I have LineRender 9000, PW Toon, Visual Style Shaders, and Manga Style Shaders. Never got any of them to work well. Did you look at my sample video? It is actually the closest to a "toon" effect that I have been able to acheive. Do you know how to set up any of the products I mention to get better results with animation?
I like the art style of the first one better - with this one the lines are completely gone (from what I can tell) except for in her hair. (A side note, this one doesn't appear to have audio - or at least the audio doesn't work for me, but the audio does work on the first video you shared.)
3Diva Thankyou again for the input. Yes, I do like well defined outlines also but again the blobbiness is an issue that aparently can't be controlled in Sketchy. As far as the animation and the scene composition did you like that in the last video? The last one is from an MMD motion called Lipstick and I had to link the soundtrack because I could not find the creator to credit ( per MMD posting rules). I like the way the toony cam renders look from GiGi
Does Anybody know if toony cam is still available?
Yep, I guess I'm too late.........again, to get a nice product. Still, I do like the for results for the most part with Sketchy. I think it allows the ability to just to the actual sketch looking style in shades of grey which I like also.
Does anyone know how to use Linerender 9000 by any chance?
I'm going to disagree. I like this style much better. It's clean, vibrant, and nice to look at.
Yeah not surprised it has gone from the store, it was good when it was released but it stopped working properly after the release of Daz Studio 4.6 and was never updated to work with later versions of Daz Studio.. And my guess was because of what ever Daz did to Studio, that probably made it to much of a pain to update..
So Ghosty do you think it is sold somewhere else by any chance? I have the istallation files for older versions of DAZ that I could use to run it.
nonesuch I think in the last render I shared the toon effect looks good for the the setting of that video. I used the same shader effect for eveything in the room that is depicted, except the glasses on the tables. I used a different draw style on them. I probably should have turned down the intensity of the environment a bit to make the room look just a little bit darker.
By the way, 3Diva I use the free program Virtual Dub to combine video or even an image series with sound so if you have a way to capture the sound from the video source you could easily add it to the video. ( For education purposes of course.....)