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Here's a small tutorial with pwToon, for people who are interested in it. For this you need Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X, pwToon and UberEnvironment 2.
The light settings are:
- a Distant Light with Raytrace shadows and 50% light setting.
- UberEnvironment 2 with high quality occlusion setting and 50% light setting.
pwToon settings is:
- Toon Noir
As you can see in the first Attachment, three renders. The first is done without pwToon.
To change it in a cartoon: Select all the objects that you want to change, and go to Surfaces (Color). Select there the objects also, than click on the Toon Noir icon.
When you add the pwToon, you get with these light settings this cartoon with a 'metallic' shine. I personally like it.
The third is an ambient render, a flatrender. (See second attachment) You get this, by turning off the light and change the parameters of UberEnvironment 2 to 100% intensity and change the Environment Mode to Ambient (no Ray Tracing).
You can also add lines to it with pwToon. Go to Surfaces (Color), select the objects together and scroll down on the right side until you see Draw Outline. Activate it and my personal choice is to change the Outline Width full out to 128. See the third Attachment with two settings. One of them is a flat render.
This is how you add a simple painting effect with Paintshop X. Go to Add/Remove Noise - Edge Preserving Smooth. I use 15 for the amount of smoothing.
When you have done that, put the Flat render on it as a new layer and use a Normal setting of 40%.
A little color correction with the result and ready is your new cartoon.
Of course there's a lot different ways, just try to experiment.
For who is interested, good luck.
Thanks a lot for the tutorial, DWM72. Hopefully it can help me, as well.
Yeah that was one of the pre-requisites when I bought my tablet. It had to have a full sized SD card slot/ USB port and HDMI port. I didn't want to be fussing with adapters. Just plug and play like my laptop. I got the Toshiba Thrive. For the time it was a really kick ass tablet, its starting to get a little long in the tooth now though. My next tablet I'll probably look for one that works with a pressure sensitive stylus. Probably the galaxy.
I have some money I'm squirrelling away to buy a new accordion but every now and then I look at it and think cintiq. But there will probably be 3rd party versions of that in a year or so that are just as good and half the price.
Alienskin's SnapArt is a splendid set of filters which can give a photo or a render a really good analog art look in any of a dozen or so different media. Unfortunately, it's a Photoshop plugin. I think it works in Photoshop Elements as well, but I don't know about Paint Shop Pro.
Thanks for the examples DWM72. I'll need to have a look at pwToon.
I like your comics too ghastlycomic, in fact they have convinced me to finally take the plunge and buy a basic tablet, the drawing type not the iPAD type. I have one of those but couldn't get that off my sons without losing an eye in the process.
Anyway here are some of my endeavours, all works in progress as I learn new functiuons of the shaders etc. You'll notice that I try the same scene or variations multiple times in different ways.
Yes. I think it's an improvement over just about everything I've seen so far. Great job with the painterly effect. As was stated, you must get in there and color by hand if you want that true comic feel but this reminds of a special issue of Superman done by the Hildebrandt Brothers. No dark lines, all painted and it worked. Sort of a cross between Appleseed (the movie) and that painted issue of Supes.
I Don't have Photoshop, it's outside my budget (money grabbers if you ask me). But I checked it, and they ask a lot of money, if you ask me. Especially if you can get it almost for free somewhere else.
I use Fotosketcher, which create also great results. He only asks money for coffee. ;) If you want to pay, that's up to you, but he deserves it!
http://www.fotosketcher.com
Thank you for the link to Fotosketcher, looks like a simple but interesting little program.
Please don't get Photoshop "for free somewhere else" though. If you need a free program similar to Photoshop, try the GIMP (www.gimp.org). Adobe's Creative Cloud membership might seem expensive at $50 a month, but you get all of their software for that price. Even though I only use Photoshop and a bit of After Effects, I've never regretted it.
Interesting results, even if some of them are on the dark side. Which shaders did you use?
I have a few shaders like Manga Style Shaders. (screentones)
Ah, talking about screentones, you have to watch out with screentones, with reducing your images after you have created them. If you would like to use screentones, you can for example, better use a program like Manga studio, and import your rendered images only in lines. I'm not really good in drawing people, so for me it could be a good solution.
But I can create some screentones in Paintshop also. Here are some examples. I had to reduce the image of the Viking Village, and look what it did with the screentones. :(
Did you know that DS Default - shader presets also have cartoon shaders? The toon colors are not that great, but the lines are good.
I have GIMP, but I don't really like it. I must admit, I'm totally spoiled with Paintshop, which is a good alternative for Photoshop. But seriously, they have a membership? $50 a month to use their software? It's something to think about it, I will look into it. Thanks.
Actually, and I just noticed this now, Photoshop by itself is $10 a month.
https://creative.adobe.com/plans
Makes me rethink my $50 a month plan when I hardly use the other programs at all. Anyway, hope that helps. :)
Thank you again. It's for me a little more expensive, I have to pay 12,29 Euro. It's not too bad. It's stil cheaper than to buy the whole thing. The price of Photoshop here, is 900 Euro. So, it would be around 73 months. ;)
Yes they are quite dark but then my primary focus is to recreate the pen and ink inllustartions in old RPG moduals, comic book illustration would be high on my list too.
I'm not really into manga so screentones are soemthing new to me, I was just experimenting to see if I could get somehtin similar to crosshatching, as you may expect the screentoned picture was done with the Manga style shaders, the outline achived by using toonyCamPro.
The other pictures all use Visual style shaders. The first picture set to produce good gry tones then rendered with the toonyCam set to high numbers of colours but low blending of shadows. It was hten put through FotoSketcher watercolour filters before adding the lines back in.
The second a try at a straight B/W ink rendering. I quite like how dark it is, it's supposed to be under ground but I appreciate it sort of lacks detail.
Here is another under ground ink rendering where I set up more lights:
The colour picture just demonstrated my limited attempts to do the same as the first image but in colour. I'm having problems with eyes.
Not all comics look the same. Here are two examples that were pages in actual print comics.
http://nebezial.deviantart.com/art/witchblade-144-preview-201484656
http://nebezial.deviantart.com/art/first-born-issue-2-pg-1-69382821
Oh, no! This is not what I'm saying, do not.
I refer to framing shots / scenes shot
In the comic books, it uses a scene with panoramic vision, for every change of place (when the following scene takes place in a different place today etc)
then from there back to the scenes with the closed center of attention frameworks.
Here I took a sequence of him and shut the scenes at the center of attention here, is a conversation between them ...
Here's an example:
It's as much, it seems, about what scene you set as the media look you portray it in.
Yes they are quite dark but then my primary focus is to recreate the pen and ink inllustartions in old RPG moduals, comic book illustration would be high on my list too.
I'm not really into manga so screentones are soemthing new to me, I was just experimenting to see if I could get somehtin similar to crosshatching, as you may expect the screentoned picture was done with the Manga style shaders, the outline achived by using toonyCamPro.
The other pictures all use Visual style shaders. The first picture set to produce good gry tones then rendered with the toonyCam set to high numbers of colours but low blending of shadows. It was hten put through FotoSketcher watercolour filters before adding the lines back in.
The second a try at a straight B/W ink rendering. I quite like how dark it is, it's supposed to be under ground but I appreciate it sort of lacks detail.
Here is another under ground ink rendering where I set up more lights:
The colour picture just demonstrated my limited attempts to do the same as the first image but in colour. I'm having problems with eyes.
In this case the black white pictures looks better.
I had also troubles with the eyes. So, In most cases I only selected the skin from Lip to Tongue and left the eyes, from Cornea to Tear alone. To compensate in black/white I turned the renders to grayscale or even in pure black/white. Maybe that can help for you.
If you want to have better control over your shadows, than I have a suggestion.
Select all your objects and remove the -Diffuse Color- textures and turn the color to white. Then you get something like what you see in the first attachment. Leave the bump maps and the rest alone. This render was a combination of raytrace shadow and occlusion.
Turn the render into pure black and white. After that you can turn it to grayscale and use some effects like blurring. See the second attachment.
And combine it with lines. See third attachment.
Possibilties enough.
Oh, no! This is not what I'm saying, do not.
I refer to framing shots / scenes shot
In the comic books, it uses a scene with panoramic vision, for every change of place (when the following scene takes place in a different place today etc)
then from there back to the scenes with the closed center of attention frameworks.
Here I took a sequence of him and shut the scenes at the center of attention here, is a conversation between them ...
Here's an example:
Already turning them in a comic and I haven't even started yet! :-)
But just like I wrote before, they are just experiments, the images aren't part of a comic.
Putting more tests here. I don't know if you like this, but I like my work with the Viking village better. I don't know if I could use this. Ah well it's something.
Wow! The 02 images are beautifull, but among them, I surrender to this:
Ah, the one with the depth map. Thanks for your reply.
But I'm still thinking which from all these versions until now would be the best for a comic. Decisions... decisions...
Really nice stuff going on in this thread, DWM72. They remind me of a video game, though i'm not sure which... Maybe Okami, or Jet Set Radio?
Ah, the one with the depth map. Thanks for your reply.
But I'm still thinking which from all these versions until now would be the best for a comic. Decisions... decissions...
I would suggest a version without the half-tone pattern.
Half tone patterns were important for printing and gave a certain look to old comics, but I am sure printers back then would have gladly not have had to do that if they could get clearer looking prints. As such, for digital work, it just seems like forcing a step backwards into places that things should not go.
Medium dependent flaws are things to work past, not go backwards into.
but..thats just my opinion
Here's another small trick. Did you know that an ambient render is nothing more than a big texture? If you do some postwork on it and combine it with a render without any texture, you can get some interesting results.
The first attachment is an ambient flat render that I turned in a sort aquarel painting and combined it with a render without any textures.
It doesn't have to be an ambient render, but combining it with postwork can give your renders that extra 'oomph', as you can see in the second attachment.
Thanks, but our computers can handle a lot more polygons :)
I would suggest a version without the half-tone pattern.
Half tone patterns were important for printing and gave a certain look to old comics, but I am sure printers back then would have gladly not have had to do that if they could get clearer looking prints. As such, for digital work, it just seems like forcing a step backwards into places that things should not go.
Medium dependent flaws are things to work past, not go backwards into.
but..thats just my opinion
You're right. It's especially Japan that still prints most of their comics black and white. Screentones are a big part of their comics. But since this isn't printed on paper, it gives me a lot more freedom. And the fact that screentones can give a lot problems with the images when you make them smaller, etc.
Thanks, I think I found the right style now. I must go with the flow, with the 3D... As I wrote before, an ambient render is just a big texture, that you put on an 3D object.
Thanks everybody for the comments and the suggestions.
This is my last result of my experiments, and I will start soon, with my story. If somebody is still interested how the Viking Village images were done, let me know, and I'll show it here.
::raises hand::
Yes, please.
Another hand raised here...