I'd like an answer on this one, too.

I _do_ know that these functions are not fully exposed within Maya yet, and as

a result (and because it's beta) it might not be working correctly.



Anyone else have any ideas?



-Perry

Have you tried output contour_only?, then comping it? I think that this contour system has some limitations, the real test on a toon shader is a self occluding object, like a flag. (See Apodaca's advanced renderman chapter on toon). MR does not seem to pick up on these internal lines, you still need to write a custom shader to do this, this is how softimage does it. XSI toon shading appears to be seperate from the contour functions. See the "rendering with MR" book, and you can see that the contour functions alone do not really go past simple outlines and color contrasts.

Now that XSI and Maya can use the same MR version, I am interested to see if it is possible to use XSI shaders within Maya (or at least called from Maya, then rendered standalone)

-MD

Interesting, thanks Matt.



I would lose hope if it wasn't for something in the SI docs, they say to set the delta and depth values to influence where contours are added - for example if the depth is set to 10, then any 2 points on the same object that are more than 10 units apart get a contour. Delta refers to angle in the same way.



This gives me hope.. these settings are in the contour levels function in MR globals! But values from 0.2 to 2000 do nothing different, so I can only assume they aren't implemented in the MR beta yet. If this is the case, and it works like the SI docs suggest when it's final, this plus ramp shader will be a fantastic toon rendering system. If not, i will cry hehe

I have noticed this problem as well and was hoping that it would be fixed in the full release. Having installed the full version of mental ray for maya that just came out I notice that the problem still exists.

The outline appears to be affected by contrast in the color on an object. I would much rather have it be based on just the zdelta and ndelta settings in the contour_contrast_function_levels shader.

I was wondering if you ever came up with a solution?

Benbathen, I hoped your post was going to say "I tried the full version and it's fixed!"



alas no solution - likewise I thought I would wait until the full version was released, hoping it would be fixed in that. I'm yet to try it myself, but it sounds like there is no hurry to do so :/

Thanks for explaining the procedure guys, Im pretty new to MR, what I found to work best for me was leaving everything but Diff_mat off in contour_contrast_function_levels for the renderGlobals, Min level & Max_level at 1.

Even so I could not get around the problem you described.



No shadows:





With light angle and outlined shadows (oposite inset):





Clean shadow:





But the contours dont work very vell with refractions/reflections

- seems to be a post render... no motin blur neiter?





For the fill used http://yinako.tripod.com/tut/nprs/nprstut.html



-seems to render faster than the rampshader

and can give some nice results:

http://home.no.net/audunsa1/sist7.html

(Maya 4.0 render)



Thanks again - happy new year

Audun

Thanks for your help, Audun.

However I think what MR is doing with that setting is simply detecting where different materials meet and putting a line there.

The problem is that there will be no internal lines where areas on a model cross over themselves. Because both areas will have the same material.

for example where your two yellow rings cross over each other there is no line.

I was wondering if anyone had a solution to that. As I have still not gotten it to work.

I did some tests when the final of mental ray was released, and noticed this has been improved - how much I'm unsure, I won't say it's fixed but looked promising...



Changing the delta and depth values caused changes in the paint line, which didn't happen with the beta, so I guess it's a matter of finding the correct setttings - at least it looks like it's being worked on, if it's not 100% now..



using min 1 max 1 is a good bet, I can't remember the explanation but the SI docs I saw suggested using these values.

Hi guys

Just started toying with the Paint FX Toon plug "Tomcat Cartoon Shader for Maya 4.5 v1.1" in http://www.highend3d.com/maya/plugins/?gro...section=paintfx

Seems to me it can ouput som nice imagery, Still there's the issue with Paint FX and aliasing. Im no paint FX wizard maybe theres a work around, double res etc...

But this should maybe go in the Paint FX forum?...



Also I had good resutls with the inkworks plug http://www.cambridgeanimation.com/products/inkworks.htm in 4.0 Maybe its easier to just upgrade that one...



Audun

I love you guys.

anybody here who can tell me why i lose lots of my contour lines when i raise the sampling quality over -2/0 ?

Hey dudes not sure how helpfull this will be but ive been working with mental ray to get the toon effect since febuary. Ive been posting my progress and have a bit of info on it,

http://www.allthegoodness.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=27



this is where i got all my info on making this work.

www.fenriz.org/projects/maya/maya_toon_shading_i.php

Hey

Glad to say that all the contour nodes are working properly in maya 6 (I dont think they were in maya 5) and we can now go much further than the simple contour shading...check this example out, it was made with paint fx, some stock models (i forget who to credit) and a whole bunch of MR contour nodes. I was basically trying every type of contour node in this example, and it looks sick when animated...

if anyone has tips on a cell shader network, that is different from your standard network found in most toon shaders, please let me know (im looking for something similiar to XSI's super cell shader)

peace

jeff

Is it possible to get MR contours do render with DOF properly? The contours gets all noisy when DOF is applied to them. Not a smooth blur as it should be. Can

I LIKE FINDING NEMO.