Help.. how to change line thickness with Xpresso

[Per-Anders]

xpresso currently doesn't allow for rendertime expresions (i.e. you can't change a texture accross a surface, or on a poly by poly basis using xpresso unless you use selection tags). there's currently no access to bhodinut shaders, and one fairly major oversight in the new gradient was an incidence (fresnel) based gradient (not to mention 3d gradients, and slope gradients, light incidence, remap)... you can control the standard gradient via xpresso, but currently only over time, not over the course of an object as far as i'm aware.

[Per-Anders]

of course you can use the other method that i describe on my website. this it would probably be feasable to do uing xpresso, rather than a displacement map, use a polygon node to work out the poly's normals and shift them from the original objects accordingly. the method i use has the benifit that it works on shapr objects, in fact better on sharp objects than on rounded objects. anyhow give it a try, might suit what you're after.

[video567]

the reason i ask is because of this image i saw in postforum... so im sure something could be done

[Per-Anders]

ok he's using naam's method for doing toon shading.

this uses a light directly in front of the camera pointing outwards casting shadows onto a plain directly behind the object. this xpresso network is controlling just that light and it's parameters to control the line.

i forget what the website is... something in me wants to say happyship.com but i think that's completely wrong and someone elses website entirely... there's a link from maxons website anyhow. give that a go! good luck :)

[video567]

i think you are right i think he is using chalum from happyship.com but with the lack of info on expresson and no manual available from the c4d R8 demo i dont even know where to start. I do like your metos you posted on your website im just lookig for something i can have sliders and pick my own line thickness and maybe change the toon colors from blue to red green brown etc as i choose i have some ideas but i dont know how to even get started

[Per-Anders]

not chanlum, the technique that naam uses doesn't involve shaders. just the shadow of the light to create lines, it's quite clever really. glad you like the newer section of the site. you can't contorl chanlum either with xpresso. you can't control SLA with xpresso. but you can control the lights with xpresso. so you don't need any shader. there's also the cel shader within c4d, and you will find flashex2 inbuilt which should give you some pretty ok results (though it has a few drawbacks, in terms of output quality, lines breaking up in unexpected places etc). xpresso and most shaders don't really work together currently (though i'm sure that will change).

[Per-Anders]

the simple way to get naams technique to work is to put a plane with a point at camera expression tag on it behind your objects, then add a light directly in front of the camera and make the camera the parent of it. have the light a spotlight and pointing out forwards of the camera. put on soft shadows on that light, and you can play around with the shadow settings to control the line softness, then moving the light away from the camera will make the lines thicker, and closer to the camera makes the thinner. then so that the light doesn't affect the object (so you can light it how you want rather than just flat front lighting) just add your objects to the "lines light" to the scene tabs of the light and make sure it's set to exclude, then uncheck the shadow form your object (it's a little icon next to the name of your object when you drag your object into the exclude list).

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