As some of you may be aware I've been fiddling with the Toon Shader for the last few years.  Well, today I tried my first hi-rez images in Iclone 7.3 and the results are extremely disappointing.
The results above are 2K renders.  The outlines on the left are completely unusable, and unscalable -- both images are made at 1 point width outline, and with the normal threshhold at 100.  Yes, I know the outline is alsmost invisible on the woman from v6 -- that's the point.

Same thing again at 1k -- ignore the transparent hair (this was expected and I have a work-around.  It appears that Iclones 7.3 toon shader increases line width with image resolution.  As a result, scaling line width DOWN is impossible.  In Iclone 6 I could've scaled the line width up if I wanted the appalling look on the left.

Note that the Iclone 6 line width seems consistent no mater what resolution (in the case on the lft, all images were rendered with a 1 point line width.  The example on the left is completely unusable.  Also note that in all images except the last, the NormalThreshold has left a spot on the woman's nose.  Since this disappears when the image is rendered out at low res, I have to assume that the lines are scaling with resolution.

In short, for me this is a complete disaster, and makes HD work unusable.

If someone was to make some tests and show me how I am wrong I would be the happiest guy here!

--Bex.

Yes, I could test it and you are right, toon outline behaves in a different way.

iClone 6.54 TOON SHADER (outline:1; intensity:100)


iClone 7.3 (same settings)

Thanks for the feedback, Matt.

Nice images, BTW.

The problem is that when you increase the res. to 2K the lines become unusable, and (I think) the normals threshold starts to fall apart.  :-(

I set up a ticket in the feedback tracker if you want to vote.

--Bex.

I upvoted your FBT ticket. I've made another one about toonshading border few weeks ago, https://www.reallusion.com/FeedBackTracker/Issue/ToonShader-border-changes-color-along-with-Normal-Threshold
They fixed it in the latest patch, that may have influenced the problem you highlighed.

I just saw this! 

I think you're right.  I've been forced to roll-back to 7.23  (which is still the least buggy AFAICT) and the normals issue is occurring there, too.  But they didn't "fix it" they just made the lines darker (and, ironically, more useless IMHO) and the normals issue persists.  I'm working at 1080 + so this stuff shows up fast.

Worse, the work I did in 7.3 is no longer compatible with 7.23.  I had to roll back 3DXchange, because 7.3 won't work with 7.23.  The HUB would be of some use if it checked for compatibility, rather than just updates (which at this point have cost me five weeks of work).  I went back to 7.0, then worked my way forward.  Apart from the improvements in shadow casting (which were unusable for my purposes back in 6.5) I can see no benefit to upgrading. I can only conclude that Iclone was so busy trying to get CC 3 up and running that they settled for quick fixes, rather than solving problems -- it's like turning up to work in the morning and finding out the engineering department tossed out all your tools because they couldn't figure out why you would need them.

Ironically, it means that I can no longer use CC3.

Attached is a crop from an image rendered at 2700x2700.  The crop is 1080 high, indicating it's final resolution.  The image needs to be made extra large so I can pan across it in After Effects (I'm recreating a 2D animation process, so I need larger than final resolutions).  This is a real problem.  The tip of her nose isn't a shadow, it is a normalsThreshold problem.