Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
If you don't use DS just ignore this post
Dollygirl asked about the shaders I use for my entry, so here is the story.
I wanted to do something quick so I went with a grey scale render, no colour and no textures except for the text bubble. I started with the deafult Shader Mixer Presets Orange Toon shader with the Value colour set to white.
After some testing I decided that the Toon Outline brick was a bit boring and replaced it with a Velvet brick and a Mix brick to invert the output from the Velvet brick. (The 800 pixel restriction makes it pointless to post Shader Mixer recipes, you can not read them if they are scaled down.So I have put up the recipes at Photobucket.) http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y212/Oom_Fooyat/DAZ3D/toon1.jpg
If you render a scene using this shader it will probably look like the first render below. The "secret" to get the nice, crisp b&w render is in two settings in the Advanced section of the Render Settings. Increase Gain to 2 and decrees Gamma to 0.1 and the grey is gone (see pic 2). Then adjust the lights till you get the result you want.
As I used the same shader in most of the scene I got very little contrast at places. The woman for instance has almost no detail, see pic 3 below. To fix that I used another simple trick, I inserted a Mix brick to invert the shader. http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y212/Oom_Fooyat/DAZ3D/toon2.jpg The gils dress is the same shader but with different values in the three grey shades
Inverting shaders can give nice effects, the sidewalk and the wall, for instance, are the same shader only one is inverted.
Edit: added the final render for reference,
Cheers! Oom
Why will you miss it? You can use Poser if you want. DS has a basic comic render mode as far as I know, but I don't know if it has the options to do the sketch type effect that you mean. I have never tried it. I have pwToon for DS, but I don't know if it works in DS4. I think a lot of things haven't been updated for DS4. Still, as I said, you can use Poser. The sketch engine isn't a paid add-on, is it?
Dana
Why will you miss it? You can use Poser if you want. DS has a basic comic render mode as far as I know, but I don't know if it has the options to do the sketch type effect that you mean. I have never tried it. I have pwToon for DS, but I don't know if it works in DS4. I think a lot of things haven't been updated for DS4. Still, as I said, you can use Poser. The sketch engine isn't a paid add-on, is it?
Dana
I can not use Poser because I don't have it. I used to have access to Poser long time ago and I loved the sketch render option. There is nothing close to it in DS. Actually I have never seen anything like it any where else.
There was a major revamp of Shader Mixer with DS4 and some shaders from older versions will not work.
chohole has some feelers out over in the Bryce forum, so we'll see what she can turn up. As to my comics background, I've sold maybe 3 major collections over the last 30 or so years and still have a sizable one stashed away. I stopped freelancing art around 10 years ago (about the time I discovered 3D art) and haven't done a complete piece in years! I did mostly role-playing games art and a few comic strips and made a pretty good living at it for a while. Alas, real life and bills moved on me faster than my commissions (and a general collapse in the markets around 2000-2001) so I pretty much quit the business. I have no idea if any of my work survives on line anymore (probably not) and my scanner bit the dust years ago, so people will just have to suffer through my 3D work instead. Still, I'm sufficiently intrigued by this month's challenge to see what I can come up with given my limitations. It's early yet, so we'll see...
Off to a good start! Will he fit in a restroom? :lol:
Dana
...NOTICE!...
Whooo...hold everything. It is just now the 1st and going on four pages already?
As you know, or maybe don't know, I announced a while back that each month there would be a featured freebie giver. Each entry will have to have at least one freebie by that person to qualify. Last month was Trumarcar.
This month will be Adam Thwaites from most-digital-creations.com. You must have a freebie by him to qualify for entry. I will announce who it will be each month, or the host can ask me before posting their intros. (next month will be HoboBo).
So, with that said...good luck to all who enter.
:-)
Thank you Oom. I am going to play with the receipe. A nice write up of how to create and use the basic toon shader.
Lonnie
chohole has some feelers out over in the Bryce forum, so we'll see what she can turn up. As to my comics background, I've sold maybe 3 major collections over the last 30 or so years and still have a sizable one stashed away. I stopped freelancing art around 10 years ago (about the time I discovered 3D art) and haven't done a complete piece in years! I did mostly role-playing games art and a few comic strips and made a pretty good living at it for a while. Alas, real life and bills moved on me faster than my commissions (and a general collapse in the markets around 2000-2001) so I pretty much quit the business. I have no idea if any of my work survives on line anymore (probably not) and my scanner bit the dust years ago, so people will just have to suffer through my 3D work instead. Still, I'm sufficiently intrigued by this month's challenge to see what I can come up with given my limitations. It's early yet, so we'll see...
You know this explains many things to me at least. Thanks for sharing your story. Me I didn't start out as an artist. I was aiming for the stars literally. So I went the engineer route. I didn't make it but maybe my son will. He is getting his masters in engineering now and he wants to go work for SpaceX.
Well let us hope we can keep the ball rolling.
Well let us hope we can keep the ball rolling.
what ball ?
I have posted the June winners this morning. Sorry it took so long, but the storms came last night and power was out.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/1077/P840/#41910
:-)
what ball ?
That would be the great big ball of fun, bigh. Nah, not really l am kidding. I just meant that we keep progressing towards our goal of having a good time and see great renders for the month.
Lonnie
If you need any more encouragement to enter, this is what you get with Dollygirl's Blinn shaders: the only one I adjusted was the iris color.
Aargh - I'm having trouble with the toon shaders! I suspect this is because of the age of my computer (still running XP - it's that old). However, I get a completely unbudgeted paycheck on Wednesday, and all my bills are paid, so it looks like it's new computer time. Hope I'll have my content loaded before the end of the month...
In the meantime, here's a bit of apropos freebie news: RPublishing has bought Vanishing Point's "Comic Book Balloons" and made them available for free! Sign into your Rendo account, then surf to http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/details.php?item_id=68701
It shouldn't be a matter of OS: all of my available shaders, and even the early setup for the Mephistopolis project (teasers to follow) were made in XP. Unfortunately, my earlier Noir-Toon shaders will not work in DS4 unless you set them up in DS2 or DS3 and import the scene. But any toon/sketch/art-style shader is accepted. Just remember that commercial ones ("Visual Style" for instance) count as paid items.
It isn't just the OS - the 'puter is running XP because it isn't powerful enough to run anything newer. (I suspect upgrading will reduce my render times, too...)
I run XP too and have no problems with shaders, render time and DS running out of memory on the other hand, is a problem.
I think about upgrading too just don't know if I should pimp up my old 4-core machine or get a new one.
GASP!! They wouldn't do that...would they? I do recall seeing a tutorial (years back) about how to create certain settings to simulate flat shaded rendering in Bryce to achieve such an effect, but the results were far from satisfying. Truth to tell, I've never been really impressed with any shaders designed to simulate comics. Being a long time comics aficionado, collector, historian (and sometimes pen and paper artist), none of them ever looked quite right to me. Still, I'll be interested to try out any sort of ideas or different techniques that might be out there floating around. It's a great idea for a challenge (and one that's long been close to my heart) but given the technical limitations (and the less than satisfactory results, to me, anyway) I may sit this month out.
Well.. when they stack it against you, you can always consider to be a bit creative with the rule interpretation.
There is 0% toon and artistic shaders in this NAE render, featuring some of the prices form last month (Thank You again they are great!),
All materials are "straight out of the box" and so are the lights and camera. I only tweaked the render settings some.
Edit: Sorry, missed to tell you the settings, Gamma:0.2 Gain:2.0 the same as in the #31 post.
Cheers! Oom
Well.. when they stack it against you, you can always consider to be a bit creative with the rule interpretation.
There is 0% toon and artistic shaders in this NAE render, featuring some of the prices form last month (Thank You again they are great!),
All materials are "straight out of the box" and so are the lights and camera. I only tweaked the render settings some.
Cheers! Oom
I am glad you are enjoying my Beach Complex Oom. Never seen it this way, nor Skipper's Saxon shield. Nice.
I am, nor ever have been, into comic renders. As a kid, I collected tons of Marvel and DC comics. Everything from Thor to Little Dottie. I had comics everywhere. I eventually lost interest in them over the years. So, with 3D, I have no interest in them. I am into the realistic renders. I will just lurk this month and answer any contest oriented questions that may need addressing by me. Dollygirl will handle the main stuff. If anyone needs me specifically, just PM me or ask in here.
one tip that may help in Bryce, Poser or DS. In the materials or surfaces tab, If you turn the diffusion setting down to zero (black), the specular to mid and use the ambient adjuster and go up very high with it, you get a toon like look to colors. May work for some.
:-)
Hmm, I think that may produce some very strange effects in Bryce. Will have to experiment.
What are these shader mixer toon presets that you speak of? No, i found them, I just have never used them. I normally just render with the toon setting in DS, instead of default. Or I do postwork in Gimp, there is a cartoon filter. How are the presets used, and how do they compare to the render setting.
here is some of what I've been working on. NAE, since there is a great amount of postwork. Some I actually traced by hand then scanned back in, some are the cartoon render setting, and some are combinations. Some of these are completely hand drawn. My style is all over the place, I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do it.
Well I did have a play in Bryce, using the foramt Music suggested. I don't think it will be a lot of good.
Nice to meet you wwes. Very nice work. To your question about shaders. In DS they are script files that tell 3Delight how to use the Renderman routines to determine the attributes (hues, saturation, etc) of each individual pixel in your render. What that means to you is that when you select an object in your scene and a particular surface on the object and you double click on the shader icon DAZ will create the formulas and assign them to that surface. Shaders come in all kinds of variations from applying a fabric texture to a surface to creating a cool metalic effect on the surface. Toon shaders are just a subset of shaders. Their purpose is try to replicate the traditional pen and ink creation of cartoons. As some of our purists would say the results can be less than desirable but it wouldn't be a challenge if it was too easy!
The below link is a small tutorial that shows how to use a Cel Shading Shader in DAZ. This method of applying a shader is actually applicable to all shaders. Hope I answered your question.
http://cyonixgfx.deviantart.com/art/Cel-Shading-in-DAZ-Studio-156161543
It all looks pretty good! I have pwToon but I don't think it was updated to work in DS4, sadly. If I'm wrong, somebody please let me know.
Dana
That's funny! I needed a laugh. Or a chuckle at least. Store things have not been kind to me the past couple of days! I'm not in the best of moods.
Dana
That's funny! I needed a laugh. Or a chuckle at least. Store things have not been kind to me the past couple of days! I'm not in the best of moods.
Dana
Dana, It has been updated for DAZ4.0 but I don't know about 4.5.
Nope, not so good. Does Bryce have the ability to use ambient occulsion, Cho? I saw a demo where the person turned on AO to get some of the shading effect.
Great explanation. I have used some shaders before, but this is a great explanation of what they actually do. I'll play around with some of the toon shaders and see what I can come up with. Thanks!
In DS I don't think that will work - Ambient is multiplied with Diffuse (as it should be, if it's faking ambient light) so setting Diffuse the black will make the Ambient black too.
The Shader mixer is a tool which lets you create your own shader by "mixing" function "bricks" with a graphicall interface instead of programming
You can get an explanation and examples in Daz's Docs
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/interface/panes/shader_mixer/bricks/dztoonoutlinebrick/start
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/interface/panes/shader_mixer/bricks/dztoonbrick/start