VRAY TOON - 'comic book' style

[CEJ1976]

Hi,

 

I am trying to create some 'comic' book style renders by using an existing vray based set of models. I need to blend between comic book and then photo real etc.

 

From what I can see, it appears as though the Vray toon shader simply places a line around the geometry in the scene.

 

Does anyone know of any methods of using an existing vray model and vray materials, to re-create that ink & paint type effect which you can achieve using scanline and ink and paint??

 

Thanks.

[kenanavci]

I just tried it a couple of times just to see how it works, and that was 2 years ago. But David Gould's "Illustrate!" might work for you just perfectly. As i remember it's super fast and you don't need to re-do the materials, lights and other elements.

 

http://www.davidgould.com/Illustrate/IllustrateForMax/Illustrate53.htm

[CEJ1976]

Hi,

 

Yeah i often use the Illustrate plugin, its really good. But my scene is full of vray proxies, and loads of tress etc etc and illustrate just isnt an option on this.

 

I have decided I will amend all the materials in the scene and change them all to 'Ink & paint' to try to achieve the look i am after with various lines weights etc

 

Cheers

[Fooch]

Well, you can render off a lineweight version by doing this.

- Save the file which you want to fake toon it. You can xref this if you need to keep it simple

- Use override mtl and make a vraylight mat that is double sided and pure white (1.0) , make sure its a double sided light mat to avoid any nasty flipped meshes)

- remember to set your color mapping to 1.0 for all

- Turn off indirect illum. You dont need it.

- oh! plus if you are using vray camera, turn off exposure and vignetting

- Of course, turn on vraytoon shader to get your outlines. (just the outlines)

- voila , render.. you should be able to get a outlined styled white render with no greys nor shades etc.. (the light material that is white will be matte white)

 

Now that you have your toon outline pass , just overlay it using multiply in after effects to your original comp.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

Plus do remember to render your original pass out with the basic elements. I would recommend GI, Diffuse, RawShadow, RawLighting etc (plus the other ones that you normally would use --> if you use it.. )

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Aftereffects Time :

 

If you have cs5 , (or cs 4 might have this too) , there is a cartoon effect.

I would make a comp and mix my diffuse, gi, shadow + lighting (if needed) --> plus mix / blend this over the beauty pass.

Best to play around the cartoon effect on the beauty pass and lay the diffuse over to get a flatter look.

 

Then the overall toon outline pass goes over it using multiply to give it a toon-ish outline

[CEJ1976]

Thanks for that Fooch, sounds interesting. I will give it a go later on.

 

I dont suppose you have a reference that you could post to show the effect you achieved with this technique in the past??

[Fooch]

The transitions btwn the bleed was done with a similar rough bit here

 

Tight deadline + loads of design changes ala architectural design competition = no render time so we did it this way

[Fooch]

Did it a little for this image as well.. took the toon lines out when it became more detailed

 

Had to do this for the first image. we then did the good photoreal ones (in market right now etc etc) The stylized one came out pretty nice

[Fooch]

Or keep it flat old school axo style .. have a peek at adamstown :

This is a pretty old squint film.

[CEJ1976]

Thanks Fooch, this technique is really helpful.

 

Cheers.