Inhabitants of the world. Any need for illustrations?

[Ghostman]

I get this terrible impression that she's sporting a moustache stubble. Just can't convince my eyes to not see it

[12rounds]

Okies ... I wasn't suppose to make any images this week. In fact I was supposed to be attending one of the world's biggest conference for Java and web developers in Belgium with a coworker. For the whole week including weekends. But our superiors decided - a whopping 36 hours before the flight - that there's too much work to be done and deadlines to meet so our attendance was cancelled. Grr...

So to fight off negative feelings I concentrated on an image and made Lord Weers - the current ruler of Port Magalie (The Withclight Strand). I think in the previous image I used too much black shadowing and wanted to tone down using shadows a bit. I wasn't in the mood for making a token of Lord Weers, but since he's obviously a non-combatant, there's probably little point in having a token anyway.

Oh and credits to industrygothica since he made The Witchlight Strand map. Observe that it's being used in this image as Lord Weers is checking out the region.

### PIC ###

[industrygothica]

Hmm.. now what could be the reason why he's studying that map so intently?

Excellent work, of course. Wouldn't mind seeing more of that building he's in.

And I especially like that you've updated the wiki to go along with it!


-IG

[RPMiller]

There is a tutorial up at Renderosity for creating cartoon renders. I'm curious how close it is to your technique.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/tutor...torial_id=2139

[12rounds]

@RPMiller: that technique (variation of the z-tooning technique) is not what I use. I usually have one to two infinite lights and the tooning effects come thru shader nodes. There exists ways in shader nodes to limit tonal values to quadritonal, tritonal and bitonal. That z-tooning technique does not easily give out, f.ex. tritonal toons. Personally I like tritonal or smoothed images with strong blacklining. That technique in that article does not, I believe, give any easy way to produce contour outlines in bw. I always make at least two renders - one of which is a pure black/white render with outlines and contour lines only. Then in post-work I combine them. I tried z-tooning techniques years ago and was never able to produce results that I like. The major problems were detail loss in textures, lack of defined lines that separate objects and lack of ability to set tonal values in steps. Now with shaders I can control the outcome on material zone level. With IBL lightning z-tooning all I can control is the harshness of overall outcome. Not good enough for me.

[RPMiller]

Still won't share your technique eh?

[12rounds]

Well there isn't anything concrete to share really. There is no magic button that makes the images appear like that. I use Olivier's shaders as the basis of my shaders, but more often than not they need to be tweaked, omitted or changed quite a bit.

I got a very simple example. Let's take the skeleton warrior 10 or so pages down the road. Alongside the final result here is a render of the skeleton and a render of the same skeleton in black and white. Those two renders where the end of the line in 3D for me with this skeleton - the final result is achieved thru 2D work. In Photoshop I blend all the render layers and paint/draw/filter/smooth/darken/lighten to go where I want I to go. In the case of the skeleton I ended up painting the shredded clothing on the skelly.

In a contrary vein, the Lord Weers character above needed more complex shaders so as not to kill off texture details from the map. In that image I also wanted the shirt to retain a look of expensive fabric so I opted to change the shaders in a way that go thru all the whole tonal range of the underlying texture instead of cut it down into tritonal steps. Cutting the tonal ranges to steps would have meant that I would have lost the remnants of the textural details that remain in the final image.

[Redrobes]

Took me a while to find out what Oliviers toon shaders were so I thought id post the link here.

http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/bcs/in...vendor=Olivier

I don't know Poser so cant add to the discussion on them but it seems like pretty standard (if thorough) set of toon shaders. I ought to try and see what I can get out of blender. I dont think I would ever be able to make the art like what you have done tho even with all the tools and shaders at my disposal. What I lack is a +5 Hand of Drawing.

[RPMiller]

Well there isn't anything concrete to share really. There is no magic button that makes the images appear like that. I use Olivier's shaders as the basis of my shaders, but more often than not they need to be tweaked, omitted or changed quite a bit.

I got a very simple example. Let's take the skeleton warrior 10 or so pages down the road. Alongside the final result here is a render of the skeleton and a render of the same skeleton in black and white. Those two renders where the end of the line in 3D for me with this skeleton - the final result is achieved thru 2D work. In Photoshop I blend all the render layers and paint/draw/filter/smooth/darken/lighten to go where I want I to go. In the case of the skeleton I ended up painting the shredded clothing on the skelly.

In a contrary vein, the Lord Weers character above needed more complex shaders so as not to kill off texture details from the map. In that image I also wanted the shirt to retain a look of expensive fabric so I opted to change the shaders in a way that go thru all the whole tonal range of the underlying texture instead of cut it down into tritonal steps. Cutting the tonal ranges to steps would have meant that I would have lost the remnants of the textural details that remain in the final image.

Ah! Very good! I believe I have those shaders. I seem to recall picking them up a while back for making a comic book for my Champions group, but alas they group decided to switch to a different system and so I never did the comic. I'll have to take a look at them after the semester ends.

Any tips on specifically which shaders you are using and any node tweaks? If I could get close to your settings perhaps I could help you with at least providing you with 2d artwork to make all pretty and stuff. I have a huge collection of models purchased or found for free that I've amassed over the years.

[Redrobes]

I think I am a bit off the pace here. I dont know Blender well enough to make it do what I want. I am sure somebody could do better than this with it tho. Anyway, I have no intention of pursuing this - ill leave it to better skilled people.

Edit -- Theres more options that I didnt know about. Second one a little better I think. Sorta getting there.