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Hi, to All. Just wanted to share a few renders. I've been playing around with scenes exported to Blender and re-skinned with monochrome NPR shaders. Here's my latest work with a G8F figure, Renee a halfling in the D&D campaign I GM.
With the last image attachment, I changed the shaders for a two tone look. The text and backdrop I added using Photoshop.
Cheers!
Pretty nice first attempt, if you ask me!
Agreed, excellent first attempt. It took me ages to get a reasonable figure
A revision of my ghoul character Dorothy Totenkopf done with Genesis 1, but with Genesis 8 hair and clothes. The shader used is DazDefault toon.
I'm looking at Cel Shading options. (Sketch is the one in my immediate sights.)
PW Toon? No longer on the store? Pity. The results looked impressive.
Will it be updated for Iray?
Kyle.
kyleprometheus_d1f25abfdd,
Sketchy - https://www.daz3d.com/sketchy-toon-edge-and-art-style-shaders-for-iray
If you're open to exporting figures/scenes to Unreal and Blender, there are number of shaders there too. They do a decent job.
In my post above I attached renders of G8F figures cel shaded in Blender. Here are a few I made months ago when I was trying out Daz Sketchy. As the name implies, the Daz add-on approximates pencil and brush work. The Blender shaders excel at the cel shaded look.
Cheers!
Are you guys aware of the newly released game Sable? I saw this today and I cannot get over how good the cell shading looks
I'm frustrated and having fun at the same time.
Yup, sounds like DAZ Studio.
The two alternatives to PWToon for 3DL are the DazDefault toon shaders, which come pre-installed, and Visual Style Shaders.
Sketchy for Iray is so poorly documented, that it very well COULD do proper cell shading, but you'd never know it because the author couldn't even be bothered to explain how the example pics were done. The only other cell shader type solution for Iray is the OSO Toon Shader, but it requires you to make several renders, which you must then tweak and sandwich in Photoshop or its equivalent. Not a quick workflow friendly product from what I've seen.
Addendum: I've had SOME limited success getting Sketchy renders to look more cartoonish, but the lighting must be PERFECTLY tailored to the skintone of the subject. Its a headache compared to the likes of its 3DL counter parts where one good old distance light works fine for all. Also the outlines turn grey for whatever reason with my method, despite the color being set to flat black.
Tip/Trick for 3DL users especially when fine tuning toon( or any ) shader, we can get "almost" realtime preview just like in IRAY using AUX VIEWPORT + IPR Tool
i.e when doing toon in DAZ my setup mostly using AUX + IPR Tool as main viewport
I agree. I also use Aux Viewport and IPR. It's really useful to have the viewport on camera view when making changes in perspective view. You can quickly see the impact of those changes.
Although I don't experiment with cel shading as much as I'd like to, these discussions are great. There are differences in which hair model type is used, or whether to use Iray or stick w/ 3Delight and so forth. This discussion has such great tips! I also like how many uses DAZ3d is being put to, how each approach adds to the general knowledgebase. I have some old cel shaders that were created for 3Delight that I do use but have found that in many cases it is best to strip off textures (with a ! Reset Surface from the days of Studio 3.0) and work mainly with lighting to get cartoon effects. So, for me a good mesh is important to begin with.
I'm more or less refining from tools that are post render though, always looking for a crisp, quick solution. The attached image is an effort to produce the look of a vintage '50's comic, so post work is a bit more involved...
That looks pretty nice!
Including the use of completely random greeblies in the background as was the standard at the time. Nice.
I think Visual Style Shaders has no tiling? Whyyyyyyyy? Is there a way around it?
@vrba79,
While I think Sketchy is a useful toolkit for Daz cel shading, I do agree with you that it gets short shrift due thin documentation. Cel shading -- particularly if you try to get to the underlying math -- can be a challenge to wrap one's head around. Certainly more examples, or video show-and-tell, would come in handy. It would help get Sketchy more adoption that I think it deserves.
There are a number of options apart from Sketchy, such as the 3DL shaders you folks have generously written about. Time, however, is against us. We pick one, learn it, then try to squeeze as much out of it as we can. Do I think there's one Shader/Renderer to Rule Them All? Maybe ... but likely not. The trick lies with knowing a range of tools and picking one to match the problem at hand. Nonetheless, you are right in that the lighting can make or break cel shading, regardless of the tool used.
The image attachment is one of the last renders I tried with Sketchy, along with the Iray version. But that was a while back. These days I'm happy with a Daz-Blender workflow.
Cheers!
Agree about good mesh hair for better toon or stylized fx . It also applied for cloth and props . Thankfully more and more PA including AO or Clay render in store so we can get have idea if those object will be perfect or not for NPR
There is Video from BNPR ( blender NPR) which explaining why in toon render - cel shading , getting right mesh or overall shape contour and silhoutte is the main key to make it / break it 2d illusion and outline. Thats why low poly still king for these styles . Its possible to use Hi POLY FIgures or Model in Blender to get Toon render , but Poser Comic Book Preview or lots of DAZ Toon Shaders offer easier and manageable route for us . Fortunately we also have DIFFEO which open the possibilities to blend output between Blender and DAZ toon render/outline
BTW Your images really excellent , would you share how to get hatching or dot FX ?
@mdk1960,
That comic style of art you shared reminds me of the pulp stories I grew up reading and enjoying. However amazing photo realistic rendering can be these days, bare bone images can still elicit resonance from the viewer, particularly when it comes with a good story, as many of the classic comics did.
This is sort of a holy grail for me. I enjoy a number of manga and Mike Mignola's "Hellboy" titles, which both feature minimalist art styles. Coming late to the Daz party, I never picked up on 3DL. This is why I've pursued cels shading as a starting point to the bare bones art style I admire -- first with Daz Iray, and now with Daz-Blender.
Here's another render I want to share. I used Clip Studio Paint for the hatches and fills.
Cheers!
@juvesatriani,
It's interesting how you point to the benefits of uisng low poly in toon or cel shading. I came to that conclusion a while back and started asking in the forums for low poly G8F products ... particularly hair! I felt I didn't need the complexity of detailed hair: the less surfaces there were, the faster it would be applying cel shaders. (These days I have the same complaint about shoes. Who needs ten surfaces and textures for shoes, left and right?) But aside from practical considerations, I think cel/toon shading goes the opposite direction of photorealistic rendering. The aesthetic emphasizes "less is more".
I discovered Daz only lately, hence missing out on the 3DL and Poser era. So my starting point has always been G8 and Iray technologies.
BTW, I never got around to thanking you for introducing me to Daz-Blender. I follow your work, which gave me confidence that I could combine Daz assets with Blender cel shading.
Cheers!
Gallery link
I think I´m happy with this one!
I wish I could get a little more definition in the torso/abs area, but otherwise I really like this skin shader.
Still annoyed with the lack of tiling.
Great image @Hylas !
I must admit I hadn't realised there isn't any tiling in Visual Shaders. I've mainly used it to re-colour in single shades.
Excellent NPR render .You`re already nailed it !!
@csaa I`ve read in Blender forum you`d already use LBS into your workflow . Great !! I would love to see what upcoming Blender Material library can speed up for DeTooning DAZ figures in Blender
Thank you!
I most often use Clip Studio Paint for screentones, but I learned it in Photoshop:
Producing gradient lines in Photoshop or PaintShop Pro or similar:
Select color range (background around figure/prop)
>Copy
>New Image (from clipboard)
>Paste
>Select color again
>Save selection
>Save image/psd layered w/channels
>New Layer
>With selection On create a gradient(linear,round, etc)Drag the gradient over the image bounded by the selection.
>Image> Mode> Grayscale
>Image Mode> Bitmap - will need to flatten - and discard the selection channel
>Choose Line - put in the frequency and angle for your line
>Image Mode> Grayscale
>Image Mode> RGB
>Copy
>Go back to your source image and Paste
>If you plan on keeping the new document w/line screen > save outline as a channel again and save the file as PSD
>If you want some crosshatching just repeat all the steps & then change the angle in the Bitmap dialogue box (I used 27 & -65 to get the crosshatching)
>When pasting a second layer change layer properties to Darken or Multiply
You can do the same with dot screens.
If you want colored dots you can make a selection (such as skintone)and do a new layer>select area in the source layer>on new layer paste your selection>in Filters use> Pixelate>Color Halftone Pattern - then if you want you can delete the area from source document or layer them together, etc.
Ensley with shaders/materials from https://www.daz3d.com/manga-marker-materials-for-genesis-8-female
https://www.daz3d.com/ensley-hd--expressions-hd-for-genesis-8-female
and then rendered in Unity with Beautify 2. Render edited in Gimp afterwards.
... and one more...
G1 Character with G2 hair and G8 Clothing. DzDefault Toon Matte shader, with just a kiss of postwork.
Perfect ! Spice up with manual outline then yours will be super awesome . Great exploration
Doing manual outlines for every character for every panel is just something my workflow won't allow for. I might use a geo shell.
@juvesatriani,
Whichever cel shader library you use with Blender, I highly recommend you install the separate Material Library add-on - https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/addons/materials/material_library.html - which you can use to build a collection of texture materials stored to disk for re-use. This add-on speeds up the workflow, particularly when you use the same textures in different scenes. For example, I reused the same textures for the following Genesis 8 figures (post touch up in Clip Studio Paint):
Cheers!
Definitely a lot to be happy with here. Good POV, nice threads on the torn trousers, and of course the expression is great. I like the way the body hair renders, but we are losing his nipples almost completely (which isn't wrong, but it seems to clash with the rest of the style you have here). Keep up the good work.