Toonification Alternative?

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

A movie would really help tell the story. Can you post something small?

Thanks.

Aharon

—————————————-
Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
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Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com

[Steve]

I’ll post the movie as soon as I apply the filter to the whole movie, right now I only applied it to a pratice frame, but thanks for the interrest, by the way it’s a short movie and it’s in french…. just one of the burdens of living in montreal :), just kidding, I love it.

[Jonathan Miller]

Hey guys.

I experimented with all of this about a month ago on some quick video I shot as a total test.

I used QuickTime to export the video to an image sequence (.psd’s) and then Batch Processed it in Photoshop.

I’m not at my office right now, so I don’t have the original video before treatment, but here’s the little “finished” product.

https://www.treelineproductions.com/preview/toonlook.mov

It’s full size (~44MB) since the effect pretty much dissappears when you make it smaller.

I used a Photoshop Action that I found on the Adobe Studio Exchange (https://share.studio.adobe.com/default.asp) site—a great resource if you’ve never heard of it before.

If you’re interested in the action, just go to the Adobe Studio site and search for “Lawtoon”

I tweaked it a bit after geeting it back into AE, but it was an interesting test.

Of course, the client loved the look, but we’re going to just do heavy color-correcting of the video instead…

Good luck!

Jon
TreeLine Productions
Fort Collins, CO USA

[Steve]

That actually looks pretty good, although my shot needed omre of a grungy look 🙂

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

Looks cool – Really nice work.

Still, I think it would look even more toony if the lines were more defined. But on the other hand, if you used a combo of this and the technique i used to create lines in the tutorial, you could get a really strong cartoon look.

Plus- I would slow this down to about 12 FPS to make it look more drawn. Anything that updates that fast is clearly a video Effect.

For those who want a gruyngy look, you can always bring it into AE and use the effects called brush strokes to make it look more drawn.

—————————————-
Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
—————————————-
Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com

[Mike Clasby]

Lawtoon is the bomb, stunning for Nature backgrounds (Forests etc), not so great for faces.

I’ve tried to recreate the look in AE but haven’t succeeded yet, but AE7’s new Smart Blur should help.

There are still many Lawtoon PS effects AE doesn’t have, Diffuse, Paint Daubs, Accented Edges.

Here’s the Lawtoon formula from the PS Action.

Layer Via Copy

Diffuse
Mode: anisotropic

Paint Daubs
Brush Size 6
Sharpness 0
Brush Type: Wide Blurry

Accented Edges
Edge width: 1
Edge Brightness: 0
Smoothness: 1

Smart Blur
Radius:48.2
Threshold: 74.4
Quality: High
Mode: Normal

I love this look for something’s (Nature Backgrounds especially).

Lawtoon does dull things down a bit, so I like to throw in a little Hue/Saturation and crank up the Saturation early on in the Action.

Lawtoon is really a very different track to a Cartoon Look, softening at every step (except accenting edges), where Aharon’s AI Trace is more of a vectorization (posterizing).

We’re getting lots of new looks and I’m looking forward to seeing more since so many people are experimenting here, thanks mostly to Aharon’s groundbreaking tut.

I agree with Aharon comment on the lines, a combo might be quite nice.

[Jonathan Miller]

Right on.

I personally don’t know if any of these methods will do justice to someone’s face. Faces are hard to get right. We read so much into expressions and it’s hard to get any of that to come through without drawing by hand and having TOTAL control.

You’ll notice on my test you never see my face. I did that on purpose…even though my wife thinks I’m quite the handsome devil!

Now, as Aharon mentioned above, changing the frame rate to 12fps will help get rid of the video’s razor sharp temporal resolution. But, would that be done just with Posterize Time, or some other way?

Jon

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

either posterize time or change the comps frame rate from 30 FPS to 12 FPS.

—————————————-
Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
—————————————-
Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com