Realtime Toon Rendering in Maya

Hello! How's everything going?

My name is Eduardo Altamirano.

I would like to share this process
with you.

It's more of a breakdown than a tutorial
of how I make these composites.

Because it isn't actually a render.
I'm not using any lights and

the only calculation I've actually made
is an ambient occlusion.

I actually find it's a very efficient and
fast method to get nice results.

This way you don't need to wait so much
for a render of a long sequence.

In this case it's a lip sync excercise
I made for my class in Gobelins.

It's actually pretty long.
It's a conversation.

What I would like to share with you is my
process that I use for creating my shaders

and the render steps to call it in
some way.

And obviously, get a result like this one.

I like it because you don't have to wait
so long and you have more control

as much over the final quality and shading
passes, outlines, specular and so on.

As you can see it's pretty acceptable.

This is my Maya scene.

Basically, it's like any Maya animation
scene in which you've got your character.

But in this case we don't have any special
textures nor shading settings.

They're actually as you can see
flat colors. Doesn't even have a texture.

Nothing more. The only thing it has it's
a lip texture but not complicated at all.

And from there,
I have my render layers, render passes

In each one I have different shaders.
Like the occlusion shader.

It's as easy as creating a new layer.
You go to attributes.

And here in presets you click occlusion
and automatically we get the shading

for the occlusion pass, and you can change the
settings and gives you the occlusion pass.

Which is... this one. That as you can see
it's horrible as you can see.

It did it pretty quick I think each pass
took 10 seconds or so.

I'm working with a laptop actually.

Well then... What I'd like to share with
you is this method in which

I do everything from a playblast.

I have my diffuse pass, which is this one.

And in here it's this one.

And as you can see it's nothing special or
complicated.

Then we've got this shader that I like to
call "Toon", a friend of mine made it.

He took care of programming this shader.
And what I most like about this shader is

that you can use a map that you can direct
in relation to a camera instead of a light.

This way I can specify the shader that I
wish to use and how I wish to modify it.

Just how I want to.

Using a map and directing it to the camera
that I like.

As you can see with this one, you can
perfectly simulate a toon shader.

I use it as a channel pass in
After Effects.

This way I can have even more control over
the final result.

As you can see everything is in real time.
I do the same thing with my Inline pass.

It is just a texture that I painted on
the model.

So it looks like it is a hand made stroke.

Like this one, as you can see it is a
super basic texture.

It doesn't have anything special.

And of course I'll change the settings in
color settings, to make the playblasts.

This is my pass...er...mask for the
outline.

And then I do the compositing in
After Effects.

Like in this case.

In the case of the toon shader, it is
the pass which I make with the most care.

The settings are very simple but...

What I do is create a playblast from the
Maya viewport.

So that I don't need to wait so long for
a render.

And then I'll use this
playblast for the compositing.

As you can see here's the sequence.
I export it as images.

And import them in After Effects and from
here on you start compositing.

And to give you an idea this is
the result of this breakdown process.

I'll make the window smaller.

It'll look something like this.

My background, just a painting for the
background.

A painting in color dodge mode with blur.

Here are the effects.

More background. The diffuse pass.

I actually like this one, because
before setting up the whole composite

we have our diffuse pass, and just using
a color selection or color picker,

Set Matte and a Ramp we can create the
iris' of the eyes.

Because the mask is circular it
automatically generates this effect.

I also use a Choker to reduce the mask.

I also use a blur to simulate the internal
shading and lighting of the eyes.

And from there we continue with the next
pass I've used which is the lip mask.

The occlusion pass.

And from here it's where it gets
interesting.

This pass, the red pass. It's actually
the same RGB map that we used but just

selecting the red, Saturation and Matte
for the mask and a blur and it simulates

the lighting.

Same with the next pass. An Overpass of
the diffuse map for the luminosity.

Plus the occlusion. This is the horrible
occlusion that we made.

As you can see it is the one that
generates the volume.

More passes. They all come from the same
origin, the RGB map as you can see.

It is the same one. I'm just playing
around with the blending modes.

As you can see I have nothing special.

I'm just simulating the subsurface.
Then come the eyes.

The sparkle, the specular of the eyes it
was actually harder to get,

because I wanted it to follow the eyes
constantly.

So I had to link the camera in Maya so
it followed the direction of the eyes.

And obviously if she lifted her head it
simulates the effect of a light over here.

Here we have the specular of the eyes
which are these three,

using the same specular pass.

The green shader which I use to darken a
little bit more and give it volume.

The rim light which isn't actually a rim
light, it is just another shader.

And this is the inline pass that was hand
drawn, to simulate a hand drawn effect

on the character.

Rim layers with Blur to give it a glow
effect.

The rim, untouched with a Matte and
Choker to reduce the mask.

The Ramp to color it and the Blur for
glow and the blending mode is Add.

This lip specular which is the same one
as the specular of everything.

With Levels to bring it up a little.
The lip Matte and the Saturation for color.

And to take off the red of the skin.

And well... that would be everything.

If you have any questions just send a
message.

Thank you!