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A take on toon shading_Compositing

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, May 27, 2014 Under: Tips
Hey all!

When I saw I hadn't shared this yet, I was really surprised. Must be because I'm so tired, hahaha. No worries, here we go:

(complete scene - Blender Render + Freestyle + Compositing)

When GOD gave me the idea for this image, I really felt fear creep onto me that it would not look good and oh snap! I am very happy with this one's result. It did not come out at all like I imagined it would. It is always such a blessing when that happens, so this one will be making it to the Home page.

Anyway, onto the technical side of things.
In order to get the above result, you need to do a few things:
- Separate Freestyle from your background scene, or Blender will crash or hang
- Separate your foreground and your background in a way that compliments the outline (ie, give your freestyle layer a black backdrop to prevent blue from the sky from bleeding into the final image)
- Uses the same lightsources on a separate layer to secure reflections and shadows
- Index index index, vector blur, vector blur, vector blur, composite, composite, composite

The first point is pretty self-explanatory, but not everyone will know how to do this, so. When you want to prevent freestyle from operating on a specific object, you can do so by removing it from a group render, but the problem is, Freestyle will still take it's form into account. This means that Freestyle, though incredible, is not equipped to handle massive scenes or high-detail objects. Remedying this is simple:
- You move your background objects to another layer and include your 2D shapes on it as well (you can have one thing on all layers, for example, it's not limited to one)
- On your background layer, you disable Freestyle
- Again, make sure you have your light sources on their own layer, but included in both render layers.

If you render now, with light sources and things, Blender will only apply Freestyle to the render layers that have it enabled.

Compositing this is no easy feat, but let me explain it like this: mask mask mask, haha.
You have a very definite outline with animation and you want that outline visible and not crowded with messy info or wrong info, that's why we make the background black where your 2D shapes are, before mixing them in with our backdrop.

On the backdrop, to accommodate this outline and add the painterly effect, we make the 2D objects there black entirely. So, now you have your 2D, freestyle shapes, on a black backdrop and black areas where those objects are to go on the background.

Run all these through some Vector Blur nodes and just mix the two together, using the painterly effect in this post. I would add though, I no longer use Color to add color back, but screen. When you simply use color, you end up with a much darker background. Sacrificing a little saturation for the sake of clarity is not a problem imo :D.

Now all you need to do is add some lens effects, like glares.

Hope that helps!!

Thank YOU!!!!!!!!!

In : Tips 


Tags: jesus  compositing  blender  freestyle  toon shading  blender render  bi  blender internal 
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