toon lines super aliased

[pacox21]

Hello,

I'm experimenting with toon lines but I get super aliased results, even with the camera AA set to 7.

See the video attached.

Any recommendation ?

Also, any tip to get the toon lines with the standard surface ? So far I've used a mix shader set to 99,9% on the standard surface, and 0.1 on the toon shader.

[lee_griggs]

Do you still get it with just the toon shader assigned and nothing else?

Can you share the shader setup? Are you projecting something through the edge? The hair color changes at the tip, as if something is being projected. Is there something behind the geo?

What is missing from the toon shader that you need a standard surface shader? SSS?

[pacox21]

Here is the setup.

I'm missing the possibility to get standard specular, SSS ... I want to composite my final look with a blend of everything to achieve a NPR look. 

The change in hair color is just a mask on the toon line layer in after effects, the lines were distracting. There is just a sky behind the geo.

[pacox21]

I have the same issue in a new scene with just a sphere, a sky and a toon shader

I'm on an Intel Mac C4D 2025 latest Arnold.

I'll check in Maya.

[pacox21]

it looks fine in Maya 

[pacox21]

the lines are fine if I render them directly into the beauty, they get aliased when I want to render them on a separate AOV. Here are my settings.

[lee_griggs]

Do you have the same issue if you render the AOVs in an 8-bit format (not EXR)?

[pacox21]

Yes. Here is a render in png. Plus it renders everything, not just the lines.

Edit: I can render the lines only if I uncheck "skip alpha". Still aliased though.

[lee_griggs]

I just noticed that your Camera (AA) is set to only 3 samples. Do the edges not render better with higher samples?

[pacox21]

No it does not. I rendered the video in the 1st message with camera AA set to 7

[lee_griggs]

Have you got a simplified scene that demonstrates the issue that you can upload somewhere and post the link here?

[pacox21]

here is a scene with a simple sphere.

Lines AOV render attached.

[pacox21]

Is it a bug from C4DtoA ? Can you reproduce it on your end ?

[peter_horvath · Accepted solution]

From what I can see the OIDN denoiser affects the filter for some reason in your test scene. Even if it's turned off. If I remove the denoiser from the render settings, I got the correct anti-aliased result. Can you confirm?

[peter_horvath]

Also, if you want to render the edges/lines separately, the recommended workflow is to create a custom AOV with the contour filter. See the Rendering Edges Separately section in the docs: https://help.autodesk.com/view/ARNOL/ENU/?guid=arnold_user_guide_ac_toon_ac_toon_aovs_html

That approach should work even if the denoiser is enabled on the beauty. See the attached scene. The edges are in the alpha channel of the output EXR, which then you can use in composite.

[pacox21]

Thank you Peter, it works !