unReal's ToonTracer: first impression

[Cman]

Thanks for spending the time to help us all.

[gruvsyco]

Thanks a heap Jen. I think your results look pretty nice actually.

[private]

I'm looking forward to seeing this thread evolve!

[faulknermano]

unReal _is_ rather technical and some of its features, especially StrokeFollower, gives you capabilities that does not seem to be readily practical, although the amount of attributes that cant be tied to the ink stroke is nice.

i studied unReal and documented mostly the StrokeFollower feature. it's somewhere in my hard drive. :)

and as for the VisualEditor: yes, it's very nice... especially when it matches the exact render you get, down to the antialiasing.

unReal does have some initialisation errors sometimes though, and i experienced crashes every now and then. but totally useable of course.

[ArtisticVisions]

Glad to see you are finally checking out Unreal, Celshader. :)
Only real "flaw" I've been noticing with ToonTracer is that the anti-aliasing for the ink lines aren't always as nice as LW edges. In the end, it's kind of a trade-off between the two: better lines or more control over them.

Also, I've found that to make the inklines appear for only certain areas of a model and not others it's best to use 2 or more surfaces for those areas and give them each a different Group ID # (that way, only the areas which you want ink lines will have them, while the others won't).

[Fongool]

I experimented with getting thick/thin by squashing the brush shape and rotating it a bit. :)

Ultimately I gave up on toon tracer because the lines were doing weird things that I couldn't figure out how to solve. But with Celshader on the job, maybe something will get figured out! :thumbsup:

[Celshader]

It took me a few years before I figured out the rules of Edges; I might not figure out all of unReal for some time.

I'll post any tiny thing I learn, though, in case it might help out someone else's learning curve. I'll take whatever information you guys can give me, too. Post whatever you know on this thread, and we'll see where it goes. :D

In that vein, here's a page that shows how to get to Shade01's original unReal docs:
http://www.ecreativityworks.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=10&Itemid=2

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Here's the meager bits and pieces I've learned about the ToonTracer interface so far:

Move T -- if the image is too big for the VisualEditor, activating this button will let you left-click and drag the image around in the VisualEditor. It's a "Pan" button, and as it says, its hotkey is the "T" key.

Update F5 -- The preview window does not constantly update itself, like VIPER or FPrime. To see what effect a setting change might have, click on the "Update F5" button or just hit F5 to see the effects of your settings change on the Preview window.

BG View -- if you want to see your final render, leave this on RGB. If you want to see your inklines only, change the drop-down list to None and then hit "Update F5" or the F5 key to see what the ink lines look like on their own.

Group list -- the inking will not affect the surface at all if the inking is not assigned to that surface's group ID number. Set the surface's group ID number in the Surface Panel with the ToonTracer shader component. To control which group ID's are affected by a given inking layer, move your mouse pointer over the leftmost dash of each group ID number on this list and click to activate or deactivate the group ID number. Clicking on the numbers themselves will not activate or deactivate them. An asterisk means the group ID number's "on," a dash means that it's "off." Holding down the ALT button while clicking on the dashes or numbers will invert which layers are on and which layers are off.

I do not yet know what the rightmost dash stands for at this point in the Group list.

[Matt-Bortolino]

hi, great work & lots of interesting stuff on your celshader.com site. i recently got a decent non software specific, post-process toon ink technique working that does quite a nice job of variable width ink lines. the idea's a rough approximation of the 'image-space' method described in this research - http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~decarlo/contour.html

all you need to do is render out your model at double the desired output resolution as either a headlight render with a white background & white material, or better still just a flat shaded falloff material (like an inverse x-ray shader). then, in photoshop (or similar) use these filters:

highpass 1.5 > levels 0, 0.1, 125 > gauss blur 1.0 > image size 50%

& gives you something that looks like this:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v36/mbortolino/posttoontest.jpg

(not my model here - was a free one)

limitations of this technique are that it's only really practical for broadcast resolution output(due to the double size rendering), the AA isn't 100% (look at the shallow angle lines in that pic), & it's only really good on smooth subdivision-type surfaces (sharp, boxy geometry would still need a contour shader to pick up proper edge detection).

but, the big advantage is that you since it's image based edge detection, you can render with anything that would be problematic for contour shaders- subpixel displacement, hair, bump mapping, & even drive ink lines with texture maps.

here's another example, this time using analytical rendertime displacement (i'm using 3dsmax) for the clothing detail & a texture to get extra ink lines on the surface (the 'test' markings):

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v36/mbortolino/tooninktest.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v36/mbortolino/toon-ink-test-01.gif

(bit of a scruffy model, & wasnt designed for toon shading)

finally, here's an idea you could try that gives a nice inverted shadow line, & is made with black ink & shadow passes: layer the ink pass over the shadow layer (in photoshop, aftereffects or whatever) with 'exclusion' blending, & then invert the resulting image. here's an example:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v36/mbortolino/posttoontest5.jpg

[Cman]

Sorry if I'm asking a dumb question, but what is a "headlight render"?

[samartin]

Sorry if I'm asking a dumb question, but what is a "headlight render"?
I'm guessing he means by pointing a light directly onto the model ??? Lights pointing head on judging by the example...

[Matt-Bortolino]

yeah, headlight as in the default light you get in an ogl view when there's no scene lights. but you're better off using a falloff mapped material for the initial render (not sure what the lightwave terminology for this is- maybe rolloff or incidence mapping?)

[Blabberlicious]

'mb: Thanks for sharing that great technique. Sooo much more effective than struggling with additional shaders, etc.

[Fasty]

That's amazing, `mb! Thanks for the technique!

[Blabberlicious]

Hmmm I like this technique.

A note to Lightwavers: I just exported the Geometry, Raw, and Shaded Buffer, using .Psd export.

S'all you need!

http://www.eyecave.com/lw/morris.jpg :drool:

[vonbon]

is there a way to get a good transparency effect using the cell shaded method.

[Pancho]

MB, that rocks!!! Thanks for sharing!

[Matt-Bortolino]

thx. sorry to hijack this thread again, but i've developed the technique further & don't need to do the double sized renders any more. have a look in this thread (3dsmax forum, but it's not software specific):

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=182878

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