Tested your materials again. They really detect cavities and contours very well. if there is a smooth polished surface the effect is more like cel shading ( contours ), if the surface has lots of warts, wrinkles and general noise and whatnot, the effect looks like illustration. either way the effect is fantastic.
Hello Julian,
I can’t believe I almost missed your thread, great job I can’t wait to try your shaders.
Amazing indeed.
I’m impressed julian. 
hey, so glad you didn’t miss it, because I thought about contacting you, but totally forgot where your thread was. I thought the shader could maybe be helpful for you. today in the evening I wanted to do a search, but you where quicker 
Thanks jinjian, Thanks Michalis. happy you like it.
moonlitmaverick - yes, as you found out yourself the shader does of course depend a lot on your sculpting. I found that for the best graphic novel effect one should sculpt with how the shader works in mind. especially when it comes to details. as you can see in the funny face expression pics ( previous post) deeply carved quickly thrown in lines really come out a lot like drawing lines. what I personally find most useful about the shader is that it’s real-time .what you see while sculpting is pretty much what you get when rendering ( - the shadow and AO or SS if you use that). here is no trial and error process between sculpting and rendering.
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Quote:“gotta stop fooling around wiht this now” why… these tests are looking great 
seriously Geert? You are asking me that? you, who knows exactly what I mean when I’m talking about not having enough time ? 
Whatever, but your shader keeps looking great, Julian.
Don’t stop “fooling around” with it.
yeah well… you’re right, but these experiments/tests/doodles are very compelling to me, especially with that latest post: over the past few months, you’ve created imagery that has a distinctive (dark) style and mood and it’s interesting to see the toon shader being used in that world -and it works- would be great to see all this translated into a comic book page or a series of connected images, even without text, only style/mood/composition.
[attach=226727]thug_03_T.jpg[/attach]
well, since you asked - here is more
update/edit
here are some plain sculpt and textured none-toon renders to compare and show what the level and balance of detail underneath the toon shader looks like ( see further down in this post). the toon shader depends highly on the sculpt. while well defined detail is is of course good, it can also be too much. for example for the toon renders I had to take skin/pore detail down a notch because otherwise it’s just too noisy.
actually I post this not only for the purpose of demonstrating the latest version of the shader. I also quickly wanted demo something that is a pretty obvious advantage of having geometry layers and yet hasn’t been shown here too much.
the ability of making character variations very quickly, which can be especially crucial in game development. what you see here is one and the same model with a one-layer-modification. it took me less than an hour to make the heavier thug from the thinner. all the details like pores and browes are on a separate layer, which I turn off while working on the alternate version of the guy and once it’s done I turn it back on. the detail layer still nicely conforms to the ‘new’ character.
right now I have this one ztl and the head for example has only 2 layers. 1 for the fine high frequency detail and one for the heavy thug. if the differences are not too extreme it all works fairly well with one and the same uv-layout and diffuse texture.
nothing new or spectacular, but as I said, it hasn’t been shown off around here too often.
also, find attached the latest tweaked version of the shader. what you see in the pics is rendered straight out of Zbrush with no touch up at all in photoshop except for the back/rim light and quick background.
enjoy
[attach=226668]Cartoon_guy-fat_01.jpg[/attach]
[attach=226669]Cartoon_guy-slim_01.jpg[/attach]
[attach=226670]Cartoon_guy-fat_02.jpg[/attach]
[attach=226671]Cartoon_guy-slim_02.jpg[/attach]
[attach=226728]thug_01.jpg[/attach]
[attach=226729]thug_02.jpg[/attach]
[attach=226730]thug_03.jpg[/attach]
[attach=226732]thug_04.jpg[/attach]
[attach=226734]thug_05.jpg[/attach]
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Awesome! Thanks a lot for the workflow and shader.
Great, Julian small_orange_diamondsmall_orange_diamond be sure that I will take your shader in my next work.
Christian
Excellent.
I wish to see these on top raw one of these days. Its about time, don’t you agree?
really great comic looking renders
Wow, the shader’s looking better than ever (as is the sculpt, of course) Also, very impressed by the two non-toon renders-the quality is stunning.
Wow, the thug is looking awesome!
Thank you guys - thanks a lot. Your responds really put a smile on my face.
I have to admit I’m quite happy myself with the result of what was only meant to be quick 3d sketching in order to have something to test a shader with.
it’s just funny how sometimes you quickly and spontaneously throw together something which then surprises yourself by working out just right, while other times you put countless hours of work into a piece which in the end isn’t half as stunning as the effort put into it.
Very nice. Especially like the jeans. I think the quality of the sculpting there is superb.
Amazing work in this thread - full of really inspiring stuff. Look forward to seeing more!