Hi there,

I want to toonrender a model of mine with blackoutline only upon white.
I made all the according changes in the renderoptions, modelproperties and cameraoptions
and it works fine in the previewrender, but when I do a final render in the chor, I get only a total black picture.

Any help anybody please?
What am I possibly doing wrong?

AM12 q WinXP

Thank you

;>/ Jake

Jake,
I'm not able to upload any imagery but I will suggest that you should find what you need (assuming I understand your intention of course) via the Toon Gradient settings.


There is Gilles's tutorial but I'm not sure it'll provide quite the info you need.


Toon Settings Tutorial

Try setting your model's ambience (in Surface properties) to 100%.

>That doesn`t change anything, I put the cameras globalambience to 100% also,
still no change.
Guess it must be something in my finalrendersettings, since my previews are o.k.
(Its as if the camerabackgroundcolor "white" isn`t recognised somehow )

but what?????

Help

Sometimes when I get a black render, it's because the camera is actually inside another model. But you may need to upload your project file to get any real troubleshooting.

Here is a picture of the scene, I try to render.
Is this darkzone in the middle of the picture always there
or can that be avoided somehow?

Thanks for your help

Do you have lights in your scene? You shouldn't, if you're using this kind of rendering style.

Hi Luckbat,

Here is the project-file.

Your Help is highly apreciated!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you Jake

Here

Hope now the projectfile goes along...

Somehow it doesnt upload.

I put it here for you to investigate:


http://www.jostkeller.de/dreid/testing/ToonTown110106.prj


Thank you

I don't think the forum accepts the .prj extension. It would be nice if it did.
Project files can usually be renamed (.txt) or compressed into a file such as with Winzip.

I suspect you'd be able to use a white on white gradient to remove the black area but I think Mike hit on the solution with regard to lighting.

I'm looking forward to running a few tests on your project file when I get the chance.
I plan to use a similar style for backgrounds in my Cybergirl project.

Rodney

for that trouble spot, you'll need to make a toon material for it with its own bias setting that is way different than the rest. If this is a moving shot, you'll probably need to animate the bias so that is keeps looking right. It has to do with the angle that the camera is seeing that part of the plane that is probably telling the toon line renderer that there needs to be a line there. Just so happens that it's a large section, so it's turning into a smudge.

Hi Rodney,

I put all the lights to"off" in the chor, so that cant be the reason.
Maybe you can specify this with the white gradient a little more,
when you find the time ( how its done)?

Thank you so far

Jake

Hi Jake,

I like your city model.

The reason why you get the black render is because you have the Alpha Channel is enabled in your "Render to File" buffer settings.

If you take a look at the tga file that you have already rendered with a program that can view alpha channel data, you'll see that the alpha channel contains the toon line data.

Anyway Jake, if you turn that option before you render you will get the result that you are looking for.

In addition, you can reduce that harsh horizon line by increasing your toon bias settings from 5 to about 70.

I don't see much difference above 70 in my experience.

You can change the bias setting via the camera (If you have if set to override toon lines) or at the model level (if the camera is not set to override lines).

Either way will work.

Good luck.

I was just wondering about another possible attack.

If you render with Toon Lines only, with Alpha Channel set to On, could you then place the image on top of a completely white background that would show through?

Its painful not to be able to test this out... but I'm sure I've done this before.
The difficult part to get past would be in not seeing your Toon line against the Alpha Channel after rendering.
You could run a test with the Toon line a different color and then rerender with it black I guess.

Just typing out loud.

Rodney

Hi Mechadelphia,

Thank you, that was great help!!

Maybe I will try to leave the ground out alltogether or just apply
a toonmaterial with different bias just to the ground.

Till now I havent been aware off that problem.
Is this softwarespecific?

I seem to have seen similar scences without this smudge-effect...

Jake

Anytime Jake,

I knew what you were going through because I've had to deal with those very same issues in the past.

Which "problem" are you refering to though?

If you mean dealing with the toon line's fall-off by adjusting the bias settings then I think that is just the nature of the toon line shader in A:M.

But here is a suggestion for you in the meantime that may help.

In your actual model file itself, isolate your street into a group.

In that group, specify the toon line thickness a zero. Leave everything else the same and then you won't have any problems at all with the street and harsh lines.

I tried this with the file you uploaded and it works fine (Just note the you may want to nudge the street down on the Y axis so that your lines from the curbs are not obscured).

Good Luck.

Mechadelphia,

Thanks again, the way you suggested seems the way to go for my smudgeproblem,
at least for this project for the time being .
My experiments so far are promising.

;>) Jake

Jake,
I downloaded your project and first and foremost I just want to say that is a really cool city scene.

Thank you Rodney,

Let`s hope, the customer is buying it, then I will possibly be able to present
a whole animation sequence here one day.

;>) Jake

Hi there,

Continuing with my project, I have some more questions:

-I want to integrate a decal as a poster in the scene, but it doesnt show up.

-I want to three-tone render just certain groups in a modell or whole modells,
so that they show up with some colr and depth in the black- and white scene.,
but cant get it to work, though I gave the groups different surface-properties.

What am I possibly doing wrong?????

Thank you

Jake

Jake,
I think we may need more information or an example to determine more.
If time is of the essense perhaps you could composite the decal image over the other.

Perhaps you've somehow turned decals off? Set them not to render or something?
Thats an option in the Render Panel as I recall.

Rodney

Hi Rodney,

Decalrender is set to "on".
I think I have to turn a keylight "on" again and put "render lines only" in the camera "off", then I can see the decal and other colored object, but with my complex citymodell the rendertimes increase dramatically, so I will put them in later in Post.

Another question occured though:
Can I use Booleans with Toon.
I have attached a project, that should work.

Can anybody please have a look and tell me whats wrong with it?

Thank you

Jake

And Rodney, what would possibly be the best way to get some tyretrack
in the sand for this "line only" toon-style...
Any ideas?

Hi Jake,

I'm not clear on which stage you are having your trouble. Can you help us out and give us more specifics about where exactly you are having trouble.

For example:

Are you having trouble appying the decals in the modeling or action/ pose window?

If you are not having trouble there and you have applied your decal successfuly, where are you not seeing the decal that you are supposed to be seeing: in the real-time render, preview render, or a final render.

Your answers to those question can help us zoom in on the problem.

At this point I would investigate v13's new displacement maps. You have access to v13 for a limited time if you have the Sorcerez CD... indefinitely if you have the Yeti CD.

Here's the approach I might take (at least to test it out).
- Create a model with the geometry that will be the full track in the sand.

- Render this out so that the tracks are black and the background white (or perhaps better... RGB color of 128 which will leave it in the middle).

- Now you need a way to make the tracks appear (for a quick method I would just use photoshop/photopaint to mask off the areas that should be transparent but I'm sure there are many other ways). As an in-A:M solution you could hide the track geometry below a white plane and animate them individually rising above the plane. An action using the distortion cage might be good to get the right 'pressing into sand' effect. Since this is toon I'm sure simple is what you are after.... so keep it simple!

- Apply the sequence of animated treads as a patch image or decal on your ground/sand plane.

- Render and view/Smile or frown and adjust to taste.

Something like that might work for you.
Rodney