BNPR Exclusive: Advanced Toon

Light BWK, one of the admin of BNPR has tested a potentially great toon shader. He says:

“Typically, toon shader is 1D, that it behaves like a color ramp. The test render here shows the early stage of 2D toon shader possible in Blender. It is based on the research paper X-Toon. 2D toon shader means the main source of colors is a graphic either jpg, png, [SVG?] or whatever 2D graphic format Blender can handle. It isn’t a shadeless material, that means it receives light information.

On to the 2D graphics. On the horizontal axis, is a Lambert shader. This is where we procure lighting data. On the vertical axis is the level of details, either controlled by Z depth (from viewing plane) or view distance (from point of focus or camera’s origin). Being 2D means it is easy to produce and has endless possibilities, with the ability to break out of toon shading into unknown areas.

The problem now is finding the best and fastest way to map the 2D data into 3D. I am reaching out to shader enthusiasts and coders for this to be co-developed further. Best thing is, 4k resolution (4096 x 2048) renders less than 20 seconds at current setup, possibly faster in the future and maybe great for BGE (works with GLSL), almost unlimited abstract details.”

Note: Previous pynode implementation.

Now this sounds interesting! What possibilities–Thank you Light.