combining toon shader with material/ combining two materials? (arnold)

[n_maasdijk]

Hi all, this is probably a pretty easy question, but i cant find the awnser here nor online.

I have made a toon shader with my preffered settings.

added a ramp in front, toon in the middle and converted it to a material.

I have also made a material with the desired coloration and settings.

But now the problem, how do i connect the two? So that my 'combined' material has the outline of toonshader and coloration of my material?

I have experimented a bit by myself a while ago, and made a multi/sub-object, but it felt as if it did not really do justice to the colors i designed.

So, does anyone know if it is supposed to be done another way, or did i mess up with my first attempt within the multi/sub object?

Thanks already!

-NM

[MartinBeh · Accepted solution]

(also see my comment in your question in the other forum)

You can use "Blend" or "Mix Shader" materials, but I would recommend to render twice and do the combine in a compositing software.

[n_maasdijk]

Thanks man, it really helped out.

Now i kind of have what i wanted to achieve, but you also recommended to use a composing software.

Wich i have found a free version of, but as someone who barely understands 3ds Max, learning a complete new software on the side will be a challende. 

But you have helped me a lot and ill be sure to give it a shot. 

Thanks once again!

[MartinBeh]

Do you need to do this with (one or many?) single images or animation sequences?

Images: anything akin to Photoshop would do this

Animation: any kind of video editor should be able to superimpose two image streams on top of each other; but normally people do this kind of thing in software like Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, Davinci Resolve (free) or Nuke (roughly ordered by complexity). There are also some open-source projects such as Kdenlive or OpenShot that should be sufficient for such a simple task and that you could try for free. And you could even do this within 3ds Max itself, using the 20-year-old Video Post. 😄 (not that I would recommend that but at least it is the same software...)

[n_maasdijk]

For now, just single images. 

But my budget is not that big as of now, so photoshop is off the table sadly.

But i have found a free composite software called "Natron". Don't know if you have heard of it before?

I read online that it sometimes gets a bit buggy when working with advanced images or scenes, but that will not be the case for me for now.

But after your message i dont know if it is good enough to edit pictures or only animations.

[MartinBeh · Accepted solution]

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@n_maasdijk  schrieb:

For now, just single images. 

But my budget is not that big as of now, so photoshop is off the table sadly.

But i have found a free composite software called "Natron". Don't know if you have heard of it before?

I read online that it sometimes gets a bit buggy when working with advanced images or scenes, but that will not be the case for me for now.

But after your message i dont know if it is good enough to edit pictures or only animations.

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For single images, software like Natron, OpenShot or Kdenlive are a bit overkill and more complicated than it needs to be. And yes, I have heard of Natron but would recommend Kdenlive instead, or maybe OpenShot. Natron tries to be an alternative to Nuke, which can be a bit complex to get started.

So I think you need something like Photoshop that allows you to combine layers of images. How about Affinity Photo then, it is a one-time payment of 38 Euros. Or you go open-source/free and use GIMP or Paint.NET - thinking of it, I would probably recommend to use GIMP given that you have not yet got used to Photoshop.

[n_maasdijk]

Thanks for the tip, i will go check it out immediately!

[n_maasdijk]

Wow, Gimp is indeed a very beginner friendly and it already helped me solve a lot of isseus that i have not even mentioned on here. Awesome and many many thanks, you really helped me save days worth of time!

If you ever havequestions related to engineering, be sure to asm me, so that i canb at least pay you back a little 🙂

[MartinBeh]

Thanks, happy to hear this was useful!

[n_maasdijk]

One last question.

By rendering it twice and then editing it later on, do you recommend using the materials within the same file and then by hand assigning materials twice? Or do you recommend copy'ing the finished file and then working in two seperate files, one toon-shaded and the otherone normal shaded?

Or is there a way i am unfamilliar with where you can "turn on" specific materials within the slate editor?

[MartinBeh]

Good question! How should one switch materials for multiple render passes?

There a multiple ways to do this, and which one is the best depends on what renderer you use, how often you need to do it, and for how many objects and scene files.

Here are some ideas, roughly ordered in increasing complexity:

1. Obviously, you could just have a selection set of all the scene objects that you want to change and then use that to select them and manually assign the material you want before you hit render. This is easy to set up but could be tedious and error-prone if you have many files, need to do it often etc.
2. A slightly better way would be to have a little shader tree where the last material is a "Shell" material that allows you to decide which of two materials is shown in viewport and renderer. There are other materials in 3ds Max that can do something similar, e.g. the Blend and Mix at zero or 100 percent
3. More than two materials offers the  "Material Switcher" and gets assigned to all your objects. This allows you to easily switch between multiple materials.
4. Or you could get started using State Sets - these allow you to record (and replay) a certain scene configuration in combination with multiple render passes but a bit complex to set up (and might not always work reliably).
5. And older, somewhat simpler, variant of State Sets still present in 3ds Max are Scene States. These can then be used in combination with Batch Render, for example

[n_maasdijk]

I think that option 1 or 2 would be the best fitting for me.

I have to switch it only once per file so that would not be much of a problem. And it are only 2 materials, being the toon-edged one and being the colorfull one.

But can you explain a bit more what you mean by setting a 'shell material' or 'selection set', and how would you implement this? Does that mean already linking it to objects within the slate editor, or is that not possible (it does not seem to work with me)?

Do you maybe have any usefull links? Im on Arnold btw.

[MartinBeh · Accepted solution]

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@n_maasdijk  schrieb:

But can you explain a bit more what you mean by setting a 'shell material' or 'selection set', and how would you implement this? Does that mean already linking it to objects within the slate editor, or is that not possible (it does not seem to work with me)?

1. Create a new Shell material and assign it to all your objects that need material switching between renderings
2. Insert the two materials you already have into the input slots of the Shell material
3. Use the Shell material 'Render' parameter to switch between the first and second material (here named 'original' and 'baked'), then render.

Note that Shell was originally designed for texture baking but it should also be fit for this purpose.

If not, use Blend, Mix or Material Switcher materials.

[n_maasdijk]

Thanks, i now understand. Ill have a go at it.
Many thanks!

[n_maasdijk]

Both the shell function and GIMP sortware work wonderfully freund.

Many, many thanks!

[MartinBeh]

Glad to hear it's working out for you, and thanks for accepting the answer as solution.