Some more renders, these represent the final technique I think I'll go with, if not the final quality. (they're just a test). I used tomcat cartoon shader for the lines, and tomcat's default shading structure with a small modification. Tomcat's actual surface shading is quite a few notches above standard toon shading with a ramp shader. It uses a completely white blinn (which I changed to lambert) as a shading reference, so any bump/spec/color put on this will show up on the model, shaded with (in the case of bump) or combined with (in the case of color) the ramp.
to get the images here, I put a grayscale image of a scan of an oil-painted solid color, to capture the richness of real traditional media. ( I got this technique from Yves Dalbiez). I then made the ramps color transition from blue at the bottom to a narrow red strip to a light yellow-orange. The result is very similar to the usual style of ramp cartoon shading, except with texture (from the grayscale image) that makes it look like it was actually painted. This looks really cool when animated; you know it can't be really painted because of the complexity, but it looks like it is (if done right). I think this might just be that not-quite realistic not-quite-handmade appearance I have been searching for.
The UV maps are nowhere near complete, I know there are messy transitions and seams all over the place. I'll fix those later.
thanks for the comments people! I'm currently working on a method of making the lighting follow the contour of the brushstrokes so that the shading will seem painted rather than smooth. Here's what I've got so far:
I'm mapping the paint texture (which is grayscale) at a bright setting as the color gain of the ramp, and a nearly black version of the texture as the color offset. I'm also sticking it in the diffuse channel of the shading ref preveously mentioned, which is the main component of this technique.
Thanks troy, glad you like it. If anyone has crits I would really like to hear them, because I know that I need them! come on people, tear it to shreds...
Nailed: yeah, it's by far the best available for maya, and the price is absolutely phenomenal ($90). I guess they didn't feel they could charge very much for something that didn't actually have it's own drawing system thing (it just uses maya PFX for the lines, a great idea because you can make it look sketchy by using tubes). It's edge-detection is where it really shines, you can even place locators ( a kind of influence-object thing) to control any specefied line attribute (thickness, accuraccy, density, etc) in a certain area of your model. You can even harden the normals on an edge to make a line there.
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