Probably this is far too crude an effect to be of much use but I'll mention it anyway.

You can put a pre-rendered realistic video into an iclone scene as a background  (I can't remember whether a billboard is required).  Then you can put in figures and render the whole scene in toon style.  If the background video is NON-toon, it stays that way of course.  So you end up with toon characters with clean lines against a realistic background.

The pathetic video I made in Iclone5 was an early experiment with the software.  (I later tried the technique to create videos with a number of such 'layers': realistic background scenery, a toon character in the centre and realistic foreground scenery.  Each 'layer' rendered became an updated background video.)

In using multiple 'layers', if the camera pans so that a non-toon item in the foreground passes in front of a toon object, then that foreground object needs to be invisible during the 'toon-layer' render (otherwise it also will be rendered toon-style).  Then that latest render is used as a moving background while the (now visible) foreground object is rendered realistically.  The down-side is with shadows cast.  I don't think invisible objects can be made to cast shadows?

Probably you will need to see the short video in full-screen to see the black outlines.  (You can compare the Jellyfish!) 
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6N4NEr_ZaQA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
I really like the black-and-white images.  Very cool.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
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Thank you very much for posting these Bexley - really appreciate the time you have taken to show your results and indicate how you achieved them. I really hope Reallusion look at improving the Toon Shader in the next release so that so many workarounds are not required to achieve the results that you have.

One more example, different technique this time.

Unlike the tests above this has a complex foreground to contend with: all that animated grass and the trees he walks behind. I did the first two renders (1 - foreground with outlines, 2 - background without outlines) then had a brain fart and tried something obvious: I shut off all illumination, set the character to Smooth Shading and 100% self illumination, then rendered that as a pass.  It produced a clean and accurate matt of all the foliage, but for some reason there was a white matte outline on the hands (nowhere else!).  I clipped this by rendering an alpha only pass, and combining it with the self-illumination matte.  Unfortunately now the matte is too tight, and crops the outline. :(  Still, it allows for a textural separation of Character and Environment, while allowing them to interact.

The background was filtered through the default Cartoon filter in AE CS5.

--Bex.

Since you've put up with me crying about the toon shader (amongst other things) I thought I'd put up some examples.  It might be useful to someone else here.


The image above was set up and rendered in Iclone using the toon shader.  I reduced the paint setting as far as possible, and set it at 128. Then I made three rendering passes 1- with lines (width 4 density 60), 2 - without lines, 3 Alpha of characters and chair.  I put everything into an After Effects comp, and used the alpha to keep the foreground figures with lines, and keep the background without lines.  Then I added some subtle cartoon effects to the background.  Here is another example:


In the shot above there is fringing around the foreground characters.  This is the blurred background.  The forground characters were rendered in both in order to preserve the floor reflection. This could probably be removed with an additional pass and another hold-out matte. The separate foreground and background layers also let me control the contrast better: I used the levels tool to control the foreground shadows.



This last example is without any filtration on the background.  The foreground is rendered with lines, the background without.  The foreground characters are shadow casting but not receiving.  The background is casting and receiving, but soft shadows has been disabled.  The original renders were 1080x1440, the characters were created with Daz 3D, and the props are part of a Daz Environment (Cold War Lab).

Because of the toon-shader all the lighting is coming from the Key-Light (which is a pain).  However, the rim lighting (on shoulders and hair) is the IBL dialed in with a map that is a simple white strip at the top.  This seems to be the only way of controlling modelling with light when using the toon shader.

Hope this was useful!

--Bex.