MAKING FUTURAMA TYPE CARTOON EFFECTS WITH POV-RAY

PART ONE:

 The first thing to do is to create a model.  Once this is
 finished you need to texture the model correctly for a
 cartoon style.  This is accomplished by using the following
 finish statement, or something much like it.

 finish {ambient 1 diffuse .5 brilliance 0}

 This will make the color bright, yet still allow it to
 interact with light sources.  The brilliance statement
 sets the "sharpness" of the highlights. 1 is normal, 0 is
 perfectly sharp.  I recommend that you use a number between
 0 and .1 when making cartoons.


PART TWO:

 The next thing needed is to add a "find edges" statement.
 Put this at the to of your .pov file.
 One that works rather well is:

 #version unofficial MegaPov 0.5;
 global_settings {
 max_trace_level 40
 post_process { overwrite_file
 find_edges{10000,.05,1,1,1,rgb 0}
 }
    }

    Things to note:
    The "10000" is the "distance differential" (DD).  This is used to
    determine if there is an edge between two overlapping surfaces.
    In this case, I have effectively turned it off.  It seems to
    have a lot of trouble with curved surfaces.

    The ".05" id the "normal differential" (ND).  This is used to
    determine if there is an edge is square corners and the like.
    I set it pretty low to make up for the absence of the "DD"

    The "1" next to the ".05" is the "color differential" (CD) used
    to add edges around different patches of color.  I set it to 1,
    turning it off.

    The next two 1s' determine edge line width. Setting the first to
    anything over 1 causes thick, black lines. Setting the second has
    no effect. (Note to Chris Huff, if you're reading this, could you
    make the line sharpness factor work on lines of 1 or less?  Being
    able to have lines of less than 1 width would be nice too. :)

    The "rgb 0" is the color of the edges. 'Nuff said.

PART THRICE:

 Render!  The only suggestions I have are to exaggerate shapes.  Also,
 pure, bright colors work best.  Good luck!

--
H.E. Day
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Thanks for the tutorial HE. :) Please post some examples.

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H.E. Day <The### [at] hedayfreeserverscom> wrote ...
>     The "10000" is the "distance differential" (DD).  This is used to
>     determine if there is an edge between two overlapping surfaces.
>     In this case, I have effectively turned it off.  It seems to
>     have a lot of trouble with curved surfaces.

Please describe the problems that you ran into.

>     The next two 1s' determine edge line width. Setting the first to
>     anything over 1 causes thick, black lines. Setting the second has
>     no effect. (Note to Chris Huff, if you're reading this, could you
>     make the line sharpness factor work on lines of 1 or less?  Being
>     able to have lines of less than 1 width would be nice too. :)

That's a possibility, though it might be difficult.  Lines less than one
pixel in width generally run into aliasing problems.

-Nathan

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> Thanks for the tutorial HE. :) Please post some examples.

There's a anim in p.b.i that shows how this turned out.  It's titled:
"Futurama space ship"
Good luck!


--
H.E. Day

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> 
> H.E. Day <The### [at] hedayfreeserverscom> wrote ...
> >     The "10000" is the "distance differential" (DD).  This is used to
> >     determine if there is an edge between two overlapping surfaces.
> >     In this case, I have effectively turned it off.  It seems to
> >     have a lot of trouble with curved surfaces.
> 
> Please describe the problems that you ran into.
> 

I've noticed that with find_edges, shadowed surfaces can take the color
set in PIGMENT_STATEMENTS. When DEPTH_THRESH is set to a little value,
instead the single colored line of the edge, we have a big colored area.
Setting a high value fix this problem, but another can arise. We may
loose some edges.

See my post on p.b.i. I used Ionic5 to illustrate the DEPTH_THRESH
problem, in B/W.

DEPerere

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DEPerere <per### [at] infomaniakch> wrote...
>
> I've noticed that with find_edges, shadowed surfaces can take the color
> set in PIGMENT_STATEMENTS. When DEPTH_THRESH is set to a little value,
> instead the single colored line of the edge, we have a big colored area.
> Setting a high value fix this problem, but another can arise. We may
> loose some edges.

Keep the value low, but not that low.  In your example, increasing the value
to 5 or 6 solved the problem of the large grey areas, while keeping the
edges.

> See my post on p.b.i. I used Ionic5 to illustrate the DEPTH_THRESH
> problem, in B/W.

See my reply in p.b.i for a further explanation.

-Nathan

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"Nathan Kopp" <Nat### [at] Koppcom> wrote:
> DEPerere <per### [at] infomaniakch> wrote...
> >
> > I've noticed that with find_edges, shadowed surfaces can take the color
> > set in PIGMENT_STATEMENTS. When DEPTH_THRESH is set to a little value,
> > instead the single colored line of the edge, we have a big colored area.
> > Setting a high value fix this problem, but another can arise. We may
> > loose some edges.
>
> Keep the value low, but not that low.  In your example, increasing the value
> to 5 or 6 solved the problem of the large grey areas, while keeping the
> edges.
>
> > See my post on p.b.i. I used Ionic5 to illustrate the DEPTH_THRESH
> > problem, in B/W.
>
> See my reply in p.b.i for a further explanation.
>
> -Nathan

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