hi all, 
I want to use iclone for cartoon animated stories for kids. 
I saw many scenes but its neither 100% realistic nor 100% CG. It is in between. It doesn't look good. 
Kids like clean, colorful, some what smooth textured designs. 
Can anyone explain how to get such look ? 

Thanks
Raj

There are a lot of ways to achieve toon like style in iclone, the one i prefer the most is the following:


Delete all lights in the scene, load a simple image in ibl (Content manager--> stage-->atmosphere-->basic) like "heaven" (loading this atmosphere preset will create a light and a sky, delete them both) adjust the strength to your liking. This will smooth things out, after that you can use npr to create oultines like in drawings. on the character side what i did was to blur the skin body texture. For the rest of your props, i would use solid colors (diffuse color) rather than textures, if possible. This examples were done in under a minute, in order to improve this look I would need to tweak the textures a little bit more, but i hope you get an idea. There is also the toon shader, but i personally hate that look, i find this method much more flexible.

Thanks raxel brother. 
is this also applies to building and terrain ? 
Also I have all trees bundles and terrains but don't understand how to make forest creatively. 
All my stories are in forest. 
Can I get look similar to latest 3D jungle book cartoon ? 

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Yes the method i described works with practically everything. Except adding the npr fx, you would have to make 2 renders, one with characters and the other for backgrounds, that is because if you want the drawing like outlines the settings that look good for characters are not good enough for backgrounds so you will need to tweak those. My method is good for users like me that cannot draw or edit textures by hand, i am graphically challenged lol. What my method achieves is a cartoon like illumination, the rest of the cartoon look dpends also on the textures or colors. The advantage of this method is that it is compatible with all texture channels and all types of lights, including gi. For example toon shader allows only one directional light and bump/normal maps are disabled among some other things i don't remember will post an example of my method with both character and background. Also take a look at the video that kelley posted, have not watched it but it is probably good

Here is an example of the method i described, it is quite rough and still needs some tweaking, but it was made in 20 min, i'm posting to links, one is the video and the other is the iclone project file so you can check all the settings and parameters, also npr is added as a postfx but is not activated, and AO was used to give some depth, since this method is shadowless, but if you want shadows you can add a shadow caster, i find that AO is needed to for outdoor scenes to add more depth without neccesarily adding shadows.

https://1drv.ms/v/s!AsSSs0N-TpMthORl35SdydH5mAgPaA?e=ABM9Vb
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AsSSs0N-TpMthORmHo7loWwhaJHeVQ?e=bMhsQt

Thanks brother raxel. 
I saw the forest you made. It is very good. 
I have all terrains and trees combo, but I don't understand how to make a forest creatively. 
Combo pack of terrain have all assets but not complete scene. 
I am starting a YT channel with Animal stories so need forest scenes. 
Can you help ? 
I can give you all assets I have.

What do you mean by making a forest creatively?

I have all assets. Terrains, grass, trees all....
But I don't understand how to arrange it to make a nice forest scene like they show in jungle book or such animated movies.
May be I am not that creative.

Start with the basics, try to make a simple forest, choose an easy example and try to replicate it. Try adding a plane as your ground, find some grass textures, or a dirt texture. Then add some trees, try to leave some space for your actors, don't make the forest too dense where you intend to put your characters. I would suggest you start with lets say some pine trees, in the gardening tool make sure you are adding something like 5 to 10 trees at a time, make sure the size of your "brush" is big enough to leave spaces for other trees or plants. After adding your first tree species, pines in this example. move on to some other type of tree, repeat the process but this time with fewer trees and a smaller brush. This will be the base for your forest to build upon. Then you can start adding grass with a big brush and the amount of them to your liking. This will leave some bald spots on the ground, that is ok, since you can then use flowers or shrubs to fill them. Add some rocks around too. Once you have this details you can try adding a sky, or even a plane with an image of a forest or mountain as part of a much distant background, in case of using images in planes think of where your camera will be shooting at, you can add a camera and continue building with the preview camera, you can switch between them by pressing h on the keyboard (sometimes iclone is stubborn and you need to press twice). you can even lock the camera with padlock icon next to the camera in the scene manager list to prevent accidental movement of cameras. You can add fog too, i sometimes add it but i make  it greenish like the forest so that i don't need to add much detail to the distant background or to cover some defects like the edges of a ground plane (since planes are usually square o rectangles, sometimes the edges are evident, fog can help you hide this. At this point you should have a decent forest, now you can add the characters and animate them, once that is done if you have popcornfx particles you can add insects or butterflies or some myst, you know some eye candy to give the forest some life. There is also the wind plant settings which appear in the scene manager after you add one tree, through some experimentation you can add some breeze or even some "windyness" to your trees, giving it some life. Keep in mind that wind behaviour is kind of random so don't expect it too always do the same thing even with same parameters, it is kinda bitchy sometimes.

Keep in mind that only prodigies get it right at the first try, it takes practice and screwing things up in order to learn, don't expect to pick up a violin and play like Paganini on your first try, it will probably sound like you are murdering a cat before you can play twinkle twinkle little star, but after a while it will sound more like a violin rather than a cat being tortured. Same goes for iclone, it takes time and practice but it is way easier than learning to play the violin. Do baby steps first, once you feel familiar with the process (and keep in mind the process i described is just my approach, there are several other approaches to making a forest) you can start with more challenging stuff, like an uneven terrain or some water, etc.

It takes time and practice, there are no shortcuts.