Digital Carvers Guild - WIreframe Pro
Mosk the Scribe
Posts: 888
Anyone know if DCG's Wireframe Pro lets you do just outlines for figures in similar fashion to Carrara's native Non-photorealistic, outlines only option?
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Yes. WireframePro and ToonPro both have this outline function.
In the typewriter pics I am dialing down the ON EDGES SHARPER THAN slider. At 180° it is just silhouette, lowering the number is bringing out more details...
Thanks Holly.
That looks great.
When you set up ToonPro on a character (like M4/V4) - do you have any recommendations for the shaders. Do you just dump the textures and put in simple black/white/or gray colors if final product is going to be in black and white? And do you do anything special for the eyes (?just white sclera, black pupil and None for the others - or black iris also if want larger)?
And when rendering Outlines from native carrara, jpegs seem to work fine, but if I render as a png, the outline isn't recognized in After Effects CS6 - any idea what's going on there?
Thanks
When I was trying out this character, I started with just flat black, white, and 50% grey. I don't have any saved WIPs from that point, but here in this pic I am using a solid black shader (in the eyes) and a Glow 100% shader for white... The sweater is a black shader with toon settings to allow 1 level of highlight. At this point I had changed my 50% grey shader to a toon shader with one or two levels of shadow and highlight.... This scene has one light over her left shoulder to get that thin side highlight.
I really love this look, it's so clean.
Later as I tried out more settings, I added another toon shader to her skin so I could play with a more 3D look. it has 1 level of highlight...
this evolved to the lower pic, where the shirt has 2 or 3 levels of shadow/highlight, but her skin has many levels of shadow/highlight.... So she seems very detailed and three dimensional while her clothing/environment stays relatively flat.... I'm still using very thin outlines in the second pic, but because my character now looked so 3D I felt the lines weren't really helping... I'm also playing with 2 lights now to "sculpt" her with shadow/highlight....
In the second pic you can see the outline is outlining a belt "poke thru" which I tried to hide with alpha channel.... I had to set a Toon override on a per object/per shader basis (select the model --> EFFECTS tab.... I was able to find the shader domains for the belt and set their outline to 0%.
And your lights still play a HUGE part in it... these 3 pics are all the same shaders, but I am moving the lights to create more "wrap". It's a completely different look....
I'm a big promotor of starting very small and slowly build up. As you see once I got into this territory I dropped the outline altogether, but I can override the outline setting at anytime.... I really love the flat look that I started with though... It would make a great comic strip. The more 3D look might be better for animation, or where you need more face expression....
In the book UNDERSTANDING COMICS the author talks about drawings that range from very realistic to very simple/iconic and how that effects the reader's sympathy for that character.... I can also imagine having a dimensional character in a flat world, and mixing up the looks.... I guess there is a lot to play with.
For the eyes I made a procedural shader with the Veloute plugin. M4/V4's eye textures are different (side by side on one UV map) so you'll need to work something out in photoshop or whatever...
Thanks for the images and the detailed replies. WIll use those recommendations to set up a simple scene and run some tests.
I've run into this problem a few times with Toon!Pro where parts of the body aren't rendering -
Previously I've had arms not show up.
This time it's the face and arms (maybe the whole body- maybe just seeing clothing here?) on V4 - whereas M4s rendering okay with same overall settings and similar shaders. (((EDIT - Just verified, none of the body is showing up - and everything is set to visible)
I've attached the image and some settings. Anything jump to mind that could be causing this problem?
I'm using Fenric's ColorBalance to desaturate the textures (but did same on M4)
(NOTE - if I put a check next to Do Base Render in the Render Panel under Toon!Pro, then the face and arms show up - but trying to see how things would look with just outlines and edges.
Thanks
uncheck DEPTH CUEING
Since the outline settings are in the render room, it might help to post a screengrab from there.
Man, Holly!
Those are some cool renders and explanations! What a Pal!
Thanks a million!
Holly - thanks for all the help (and sorry - should have posted those settings)
Turned out it wasn't depth cueing. I'd set up an override toon settings for under effects for this character when I'd first started playing with Toon!Pro and had forgotten all about it.
Re-reading the Toon Tutorial on DCG since I'm still having some problems getting things exactly how I'd like. Close, though, and I think Toon will end up working well for my project.
I need to make the outline around the eyes thinner on an M4 character being rendered with Toon!Pro (but I want to maintain a relatively thick black outline around body and shading domains).
I've tried overriding both the face and the eye socket and using thin line there, but not helping.
Can anyone explain how to do this?
I don't have it, so I can't help with the technical aspect. One thing I did notice with Carrara's toon effect is that the eyelashes would add to the fat line look around the eyes the further away from the camera they were. Close-ups weren't so bad, but as I said, the further away the camera was, the fatter they looked.
My solution was to open the model in the VM, select the eyelash shading domain, and then View--> Hide Selection. No alphas to worry about! Perhaps that may help?
Thanks - gave it a try, but the line size of Toon !Pro set in the render room still seems to be the overwhelming determinant - and I have the same problem, that close up eyes can look okay, but further away, lines too thick
But I'm beginning to think that this should change!
I must admit, I have a list of plugins I want from DCG. Although I want to collect all of them, Toon Pro was never one that made it to the list of ones I want first. But now I find myself wondering if I should consider using this to try for an entirely different overall look...
...and, if not for my main project, perhaps for some side works. Very cool stuff! I definitely want the Terrain Tools and Anything Goos to be the next from DCG.
The thing is, I have Shader Ops, Shader Ops 2, and Enhance C and by just having any one of them will show how much value gets added immediately to Carrara upon installation. So this taught me that, the fact that I enjoy exploring many facets of Carrara, it would be an injustice to myself to NOT collect the whole catalog. The hardest part being which order to collect them.
After seeing the description page for Toon! Pro, at DCG, while comparing with what's going on in this thread, I'm seeing that this plugin has a lot more going for it than just going anime. And then Wireframe Pro looks like it would fit nicely, right along with Toon! Pro.
Shader Plus, Shader Gel and Strobe, Anything ...'s, Cognito, Noir, Parchment...
Clicking on any of Eric's plugins for Carrara or LightWave Launches an urgency to own such a tool, making it an ever-growing difficulty to decide where to begin! Sure would be nice to be in a situation to afford the whole slew at once! But getting the three I've mentioned earlier all at once was a lot to take in! They really add a lot of functionality, and are just awesome to add to the already excellent collection of tools in Carrara!
Could it be the eyelashes? Toon pro might be outlining them (and not respecting alpha invisibility)
**edit D'OOHH Evilp beat me to it....
Mosk, consider either modifying M4 (morph/removing eyebrows altogether) or custom shader that fake or ignore Toon Pro.... There's a reason why "toon figures" are greatly simplified...
But I'm beginning to think that this should change!
I must admit, I have a list of plugins I want from DCG. Although I want to collect all of them, Toon Pro was never one that made it to the list of ones I want first. But now I find myself wondering if I should consider using this to try for an entirely different overall look...
...and, if not for my main project, perhaps for some side works. Very cool stuff! I definitely want the Terrain Tools and Anything Goos to be the next from DCG.
I think what you'll end up using most depends a lot on how you work. I have pretty much all of his plugins (may be missing one or two, but not many) because mostly (for me) its about having the capability -- I'm not methodical enough to plan out what I'm going to do or use and do a lot of poking around when I'm working on a shader. I probably personally get the most from the Enhance:C and Shader Ops plugins, but again, I think it probably just depends. I have definitely gotten good mileage from the ToonPro plugin as as well.
I also like the non-photorealistic renderer that was mentioned earlier, but it is fairly restrictive. Editing mesh is sometimes necessary (it works best with consistent polygon sizes) and I wish the trick of hiding vertices had occurred to me (not respecting alpha is a pain), that's a good way to do deal with it.
Good point, Thoromyr.
When it comes down to it, I spend less time tinkering with shaders - just going with what I've already discovered that I like to work with - and more time working out the other elements of the scene/animation.
For the most part, I'm not entirely certain that I need to get his terrain tools. But I do have the feeling that I'll never stop using them once I do end up getting them.
I've had fun playing with the non-realistic render engine, but it never really was my vision to go Toon. This always put Toon! Pro towards the end of my "to get" list. Seeing some of Holly's examples (above) might just change my tune (pardon the anatomical pun) towards that!
My forays into terrain editing never went well, but whether its tweaking an existing shader or building a new one -- I spend quite a bit of time on shaders. Which may be why I'm such a fan of Fenric's plugins as well (the one to tweak color channels is particularly awesome).
@Holly: obviously you'll go where you will, but I wanted to say that your initial "flat" picture was awesome and IMO better with my personality than the rest. Beautifully done.
Hello, I'm new to Carrara, but been playing with DAZ Studio for a couple of years now.
In using the NPR rendering option with just the OUTLINE option chosen I was unable to get lines that were perfect looking.
With only color, thickness and length settings avilable to me I found that either the ends of the lines extend out too far or the lines are broken on curves.
I assume I must be missing something, any help to get those perfect outlines would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Hya welcome to Carrara. One option is to set the thickness and length settings so they add up to 100 percent - that's what Cripeman says in his tutorial at least.
see here http://carraracafe.com/tutorials/how-to-make-a-blueprint-style-render/
cheers :)
Also check out the current thread on Carrara and NPR.. lots of tips, tricks and samples there for you to check out
thanks Stezza :)
oh I forgot to mention the Coverage render pass - that will give you lines around objects - a little too clean so you need to dirty them up - wont give details within figures though
Thanks for the info all, I found the Fragment Coverage element under Render | Output | Multipass, and that may help a bit.
I have since tried the Vectorstyle 2 plugin which does a beautiful job of gettting clean lines. Not sure why saving to Adobe Illustrator .ai format does not work with Illustrator, so saving to .eps works okay.
May look at YAToon and/or Toon! Pro plugins as well.
Holly Wetcircuit Rocks! Thankful for the settings, examples and instrucition.
Head Wax also Rocks! See Carrara Non Photo Realistic Works - go on, you know you want to..." for many examples, settings and instuction by Andrew and many others.
There is even more information in Carrara Challenge #32 They Only Come Out At Night in which NPR is a catagory.