Maya’s Ai Toon shader renders the cartoon-like image.
This article is an introduction to using Ai Toon shaders.
Rendering Results of Ai Toon Shader
Here is a comparison of rendering results with the Ai Toon shader and the Ai Standard Surface shader.
The left side is the result of applying the Ai Standard Surface and the right side is the result of applying the Ai Toon shader. Both of them are same geometry. How do you think them? The Ai Standard Surface looks realistic and the Ai Toon Shader looks cartoonish.
I thought it looked like an American comic book when I first saw it.
Configure Ai Toon Shader
You use the Ai Toon shaders in the following node structure.
The “PostBodyToon_MAT” is the Ai Toon, and the “aiRampRgb2” is the Ai Ramp Rgb.
Configure the Ai Ramp Rgb
The right of the comparison image shows three reddish colors. Ai Ramp Rgb generated this color.
You need to connect the “Out Color” of the Ai Ramp Rgb to the “Base Tonemap” of the Ai Toon. If these are not displayed in the hypershade, do the following.
Set the color to the “Selected Color” of the Ai Ramp Rgb in the attribute editor to display the gradation. 2 to 4 colors would be good. Also, set the Interpolation of each color to “None” to change the colors tightly.
Draw contour lines
To draw the contour lines on the edges, change the Arnold settings.
The default value of 2.0 for Width is acceptable.
Adjustment of contour line drawing
You need to configure the values with the rendering result to adjust the rendering result of the contour lines.
You can adjust them with the “Angle of Threshold” of the “Edge Detection” of the “Ai Toon” in the attribute editor. With the default value of 180, none of them were rendered. Therefore, you should use a small value.
The light sources, the position of the camera, and the resolution of the rendering also affect the rendered result. Therefore, trial and error is necessary. For example, the rendering results for each value were as follows.
Conclusion
I made it look like a cartoon, but it doesn’t have the cel-look of a cartoon. I think it can be done depending on the settings.
I had heard that 3D images were also rendered in animation production, so I tried it, but it was a bit different. Upon further research, they often use a plug-in called Pencil+.
Ai Toon can render the cel-look image
I found the following web page.
It depends on the settings. You can find various options on the following page.
The article explains how to create the cel-look character with Maya
The article explains how to create the cel-look character with Maya and is available on the Autodesk::AREA JAPAN website.
It uses Unity for rendering, not Arnold.
