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Thanks a lot for all of your tips, @Dartanbeck
For quickly set up a FilaToon environment I use a set from Genesis 9 Toon:
The way I've been doing it:
The Distant Light makes the flesh tone. I aim it forward from behind, set the color to the skin tone adjustment I want to maintain, and adjust the strength on a scene per scene basis - though I've got a decent starting point as my defualt.
Key light (spot) is my main highlight seen coming in from our right on the above Vampirella image. I vary the color for the scene I want. It's usually pretty bright.
Rim light (spot) is also pretty strong and by default I have mine cascading from over the right shoulder (our left)
Fill Light comes from near the camera and looks downards slightly onto the character. I use this one to counter the color of the Distant Light to represent the color of the environement I want the scene to be.
With all of those in my scene, I can rotate them around the character since I have each in their own null which is at 0x, 0y, 0z. And then all of those 'control nulls' are inside the main null so I can rotate the entire rig.
Why is this cool?
As seen in the Vampirella example above, I'm casting several tones to define shapes.
But with a few simple turns of the Y Rotation dials of the light nulls, I can make it flat like a comic book
Perfect! I hadn't noticed that they've added that! :)
There seems to be some erratic behavior with this shader... I was (and still am) converting an old filament scene I did to an all-FilaToon-shaded scene and I couldn't make my character cast shadows not in a million years... Then, I decided to import it to an all-FilaToon scene I made yesterday from scratch (I did it by saving the character as a subset). When I imported, the shadows were there, but the skin was completely different (for instance, I couldn't activate glossiness in my old scene, but, when I imported the character, the glossiness showed up; also, the colors were totally different). Some things could be due to the lighting of the old scene (e.g., the colors) but some things, like the glossiness, I doubt it. Nothing too dramatic, since I'll redo the work in a new scene, but, if someone has experienced this and knows some workaround, I'd like to know.
I've also noticed some weird behaviors between the old filament and the new FilaToon. For instance, in my old scene, I was using an environment (HDRI) for lighting (draw dome off, with a skydome for the sky), but there was also a distant light to cast shadows. If I turned the environment light off, everything that had the old shader would go dark, but the surface I've already applied the toon shader would be lightened by the distant light...
EDIT: another weird thing... In the old scene, I've used the FilaToon - Constant shader for the eyelashes, as Dartanbeck taught us. When I imported my character to the new scene, the eyelashes were gone! The trick I used to make it show up was to set the Cutout Opacity to 2. I don't think this has anything to do with lighting...
Were all those weird behavior caused because the old scene had written in it some configuration that were affecting the FilaToon shading?
Trying to figure out what's going on here:
1st render - no toon shaders
2nd render - base shader on everything
3rd render - base shader on hair only
Why do her eyes disappear?
Why does the hair disappear if I only apply the base shader to that?
I don't know why I wasn't able to get outline on the trees or the houses while I had to hide the vines because they were drowned in outlines.
I have also absolutely no idea how to light a scene in Fila-toon: I have a spotlight on the right of the character (configured following Mada's advices) but I had to get it almost on top of the character to see a difference and when I tried to get one behind the character all I could get was glowing eyes (with or without setting them as Mada recommanded).
The outfit did convert nicely, I think, to Fila-toon (well once I remember that I had hidden the outline geoshell
)
At least the renders were fast but the outline seems to make it especially critical that clothes have some distance between them and the skin and I was not able to find how to get it around the end of the sleeves or between the skirt and the leg: Daz crashed two times when I tried to use Hexagon to correct the situation and the usual Push Modifier + Weight map failled almost as badly (no crash at least). On top of that, I had a problem with exporting the pose and the timeline for simulation is a mess, but that's a problem for another discussion
One last question: is there a way to filter elements like poses / morphs made for the anime base ? A small number of them have anime (or something like that) in their name, but I saw a couple of them to get 'anime' mouth but I don't think they were labeled anime.
The Genesis 9 version hides the default eyes (by deletion, visibility of graft, I'm not sure)
Well, when coverting older scenes, many things that are even a little bit different will make a big difference in Filament. The shader is the tool, but not the culprit here. There's something else going on that is so easy to overlook it wasn't caught (yet).
Shadows - makes sure you have lights in the scene with Deep Shadows enabled. I'm sure you've checked this, but... well... I don't know. I caught that one myself yesterday. It was a simple scene so it was easier for me to actually find and fix.
Sometimes one light (Distant?) can be a bit too strong which makes the shadows disappear. I caught that one myself yesterday. It was a simple scene so it was easier for me to actually find and fix.
Filament setting possibilities have changed Dramatically with this release. So some subtle (or major) differences in how those are set up can make all the difference in the world too.
It's very difficult to pinpoint without having the two scenes to compare on screen. Just comb through with open eyes and a patient mind - you'll discover the issue.
One thing that kept getting me is that I was making changes when I wasn't on frame 0, so my lights were all buggered up. It was a silly thing, but it had me scratching my head for an embarrassingly long time! :)
Because we need to Deselect the Cornea and Eye Moisture Before applying the shader. It's an opaque shader so it made those two elements solid white
Because dForce Strand-Based Hair doesn't work with the shader
To follow up on this a bit, the Genesis 9 Toon figures are very special. They are set up Beautifully to work with all of this Toon stuff in ways that ordinary figures' setups can't.
So if we Really want to make awesome Anime/Toon recreations with our non-Genesis 9 Toon figures, we need to understand how this all works.
The easiest way that I've found to figure this all out was to load in a Genesis 9 Toon figure and examine it - especially all of the new Anime anatomy parts - Floating Irises, shadow plane, etc.,
Looking at the Floating Iris with everything else turned off demonstrates the energy and motivation that Daz 3D put into this design - it's nothing short of Brilliant!
Yesterday I discovered that I could apply the FilaToon shader to Genesis 8 Eyelashes, and then place the cut-out transparency map back into the new shader - and it worked. Just after that I discovered that I could use my MMX Genesis 9 For All clone to auto-fit the Genesis 9 Toon Eyelashes to my figure,
After that the preset options cough up an error. But that was no trouble at all. I clicked on the transparency map and hit "Browse" which took me to the existing folder and I selected the one I wanted - Bam!
It's all just growing pains, my friend. It's new. It takes a little time to get the muscle-memory going. This was a nicely ambitious scene, so yeah... it'll take some time and patience in these early stages - but you'll figure out that it gets easier and faster as we push forward.
So, Vines probably could have stayed. If there are multiple Toon Outlines, select them all and then select them all in the parameters pane and lower their mesh offset all at once to make the outline tighter.
As for the other parts, like trees and houses, here's a common mistake that I was making when doing full scenes like this: When we apply the FilaToon shader, if we want the Toon Outline, we need to make sure that, not only the material is selected, but also the object in the scene tab. All too many times I'll have all of the materials selected, but the actual prop isn't actually selected in the scene tab.
One fix is to select the item you want an outline on and run the preset again. If it doesn't see a Toon Outline, it'll add one.
Another way - if all else fails - add a Geometry Shell to the item (Create > Create New Geometry Shell) - select the GeoShell and apply the Outline Preset, which you can find if you just select Shader Presets > FilaToon (without going into Presets)
It looks cool, what you've got going on! I agree that the dress looks awesome!
Lights are lights. If it only works when it's too clode to the figure, back it off again and keep making it stronger until it works. For FilaToon, since we can see the render as we work, instead of typing in values like I did before, I just grab hold of that Luminance slider and start dragging - not watching the slider's numbers, but the scene. A lot of times I purposely go way too bright for a while so that I can really hone in on how I want it placed in the scene - then turn it back down to how I want it to look.
Having at least one Distant Light in the scene helps - then go to your Filament Draw Options node and turn off the headlamp slider (0.00) or just adjust it to your liking. In truth, I haven't played with the Headlamp much.
Don't be afraid to add a touch of color to your lights. We can always put it back if we want - but it can be helpful for getting a good comic look.
I really like this texture effect on the hair.
Yeah. Me too! I like the whole thing you did here!
Very cool hair!
Thanks a lot, @Dartanbeck
Using your tips about Deep Shadows enabled, I finally got a render with the shadow.
Thanks again.
I am so happy that this thread is helping people get up to speed with using FilaToon - and a huge thank you to everyone who is jumping in to answer questions - it is very much appreciated.
I THINK I figured out a work around to my issue with the low lighting issue, I went into the Tonemapper Options and then set the Exposure Values from it's default to 11.00 and got a nicely lit figure render.
If you load a Toon figure and zero out the anime morph to get the default Genesis and that happens, you can use Toon Iris Depth Left and Right to fix it :)
So, I can't always find things in the exact area within Daz Studio but I can find them and they work. So I am going to suck it up and deal with that difference. That being said, I was able to convert all the clothing my little ones are wearing. So that is a huge YAY. Below are 2 images. The first one where I couldn't get the clothing to convert and the second where not only the clothing is converted, I was able to get my FPE Toon Textures for G9 working as well.
I'm going to continue to play around with things thus far and organize my new questions into a new post later.
Thank you all, especially @Crosswind, for putting up with my all over the place questions. You are a saint.
Great solutions :) I also have a third option - you can open the texture map and draw an outline where you need it - resave as a new map and load that instead. Its fake but it fools the eye enough to work.
edit : and if you have Substance Painter its even easier, you can use the pen tool to draw directly on the model and export the new map
While we are all here and having fun, I'm thinking of two problems that may be related. Fire/flames and plants are modelled by most artists right now. Most of the time I see planes that have a texture painted on and an opacity map that removes everything around. After I used Dartanbecks hack with the constant shader preset I figured that, yes it would use the opacity map but the outline would not play along nicely. I still got the outline in the shape of the original plane and using the opacity map will cut out the outline, b/c of its positioning. Now I'm thinking, could an inverted map solve the problem? I haven't tried it yet, and I will have no time for that in the next few days, thanks to my stuffed calendar. Why was this awesome tool released now, that my vacation is over and not three weeks earlier?
Looking at your renders there's no outline - how are you applying the shaders? And are you using Filament to render?
The outline needs geometry to work, if its just a flat plane that is what is going to be outlined. I thought the constant shader actually removes the outline when applied?
Yes, that worked. Thanks!
Well this hair is not strand-based. But for some reason it suddenly worked after re-applying the original tecture.
1st render - hair with the original hair shader.
2nd render - after applying the filatoon hair preset to the hair
3rd render - reapplying the original texture on top of the filatoon hair preset - didn't expect that, but looks good - maybe you're supposed to do that?
I don't see any outlines - is that on purpose and you hid the shell or its just very thin? :)
Yes, it does remove the outline, but for a proper comic/anime look, we need one. So I added it manually. I understand that the Geoshell needs geometry to work from. I just hoped that I could do some trickery to fake an outline effect along the surface. Guess I'm wrong. So we need modelled surfaces for plants and flames then. Let us hope that some artists out there are into making more toon stuff, that isn't clothing, hair or characters.
It is filament yes. I know it quite well, experimented a lot with it a few years years ago. Just trying to figure out this new toon thing.
Here I just used the filatoon base shader, while experimenting. Attached the final one with outlining. Note that the character I use (Snowflake for A7) has a very bright skin, so nothing wrong here.
OK, this is Genesis 3 however.
oh yes - now I can see the outline :) great.
For the hair - that's using the iray shader now since you applied it again, and you'll notice that the edges of the fringe is black since opacity doesn't work in Filament. Doesn't look bad however so if you're happy with the look I would call it good enough. If you do want to use the hair shader itself, instead of applying the hair textures again after adding the toon shader, simply drop the maps into the correct channels (I think the hair shader does keep the maps intact when you apply it - but you have to play with rim lighting a lot in my experience)