Need help finishing toon shader

[craigmonroe1]

*See attached image for workflow*

 

I'm exploring non photo-realistic rendering and first up is a "toon"/halftone pattern shader.

 

I'm having trouble getting the black outline to occupy the entire edge of the geometry. There's a weird cut-off on the z axis and no outline closet to the camera. I've tried many different falloff types, falloff directions, and gradient maps.

 

Any thoughts?

Edited September 16, 2015 by craigmonroe1

[Nicolai Bongard]

Press 8 to go to Environment and effects, then in the athmosphere add vray toon. The settings should be pretty straight forward.

[craigmonroe1]

I know there's a V-Ray toon option. I wanted to see of I could create my own just an exercise.

[Scott Schroeder]

I think you are close. Are you following this tutorial?

http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/toon_falloff/toon_falloff.htm

 

Try mixing up the falloff types.

[craigmonroe1]

No, I've never seen that tutorial until now. Thanks for the link though.

 

I knew falloff or gradient ramp would work for color transition, followed by a sharper falloff for the outline. Getting the correct direction for the contour lines and actually seeing sharp color transitions are the hard parts. Thinking critically about how shaders and maps work has been the biggest thing I've learned recently from guys like Austris from Viscorbel and Grant Warwick.

 

I successfully did it with Mental Ray back in college using contours in the mental ray connection. Check it out below. I still have the original files too.

Edited September 17, 2015 by craigmonroe1