Manual Modules Sketch and Toon Sketch and Toon Post Effect
Sketch and Toon Basic Main Lines Render Multi-Pass Shading Editor DisplayRender
The Render tab is home to general controls for Sketch and Toon’s rendering, such as the strength of line antialiasing and the global thickness of lines.
The Line AA setting controls the strength of antialiasing Sketch and Toon applies to the lines. Increase the value for smoother lines, but keep in mind the lines will take longer to render the higher you set the value. For best results, set Line AA to Best and ensure CINEMA 4D’s Filter is switched on (on the Render Settings > Antialiasing tab, set Antialiasing to Geometry or Best).
How CINEMA 4D’s antialiasing affects the lines
There are two parts to CINEMA 4D’s antialiasing: the Antialiasing mode (None, Geometry, Best) and the Filter option, which are both specified on the Render Settings > Antialiasing tab.
Antialiasing
The Antialiasing mode generally has no effect on the lines. It only affects the lines if Line AA is set to Off, Antialiasing is set to Best and the Post Render option is disabled. Geometry mode doesn’t affect the lines because it smooths geometry edges only and the lines are not geometry.
Filter
The second part of CINEMA 4D’s antialiasing is the Filter option, which applies a filter over the whole image during rendering (provided Antialiasing is set to Geometry or Best; the Filter is switched off automatically when Antialiasing is set to None).
The Filter does affect the lines (because the lines are part of the image) and helps to smooth them. The one exception is if the Post Render option is enabled, in which case the filter will have no effect on the lines because the lines will then be rendered after everything else, including after all post effects and after the filter has been applied.
Enabling this option does two things:
- First, it makes Sketch and Toon render after all other post effects, enabling you to apply lines over effects such as glow.
- Second, it allows you to access the Multi-Pass settings for the Sketch and Toon effect
Rendering with the post renderer can be quicker, but the quality is not as high. Also, the post renderer does not use multiple CPUs, so if you are using a multi-processor computer, this may cancel out any speed-up.
If this option is enabled, the Sketch and Toon lines will blend with anything behind them, not just other Sketch and Toon lines.
Here you can choose which objects are rendered by Sketch and Toon. All objects are rendered by default with Mode set to Exclude and the Objects box empty. To include or exclude specific objects, set Mode to Include or Exclude and drag and drop the objects into the Objects box.
Here you can choose which objects are rendered by Sketch and Toon. All objects are rendered by default with Mode set to Exclude and the Objects box empty. To include or exclude specific objects, set Mode to Include or Exclude and drag and drop the objects into the Objects box.
Thickness Scale [0..10000000%]
This is a global scale setting for line thickness. A value of 100% leaves the lines unchanged. Increase the value to make all lines in the scene thicker or decrease it for thinner lines.
Enable this option to switch on the Resolution Independent settings.
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| From left to right: original duck, larger render of the duck with Resolution Independent disabled (center) and enabled (right). |
These settings are for resolution-independent output. They automatically scale pixel-based parameters such as Thickness to ensure the image looks the same at the new resolution, only larger or smaller.
The base resolution tells Sketch and Toon the resolution on which the pixel values are based. You can choose a custom resolution (Base Resolution set to Custom) or the resolution defined in the render settings on the Output tab (Base Resolution set to Render Settings).
For example, suppose you’ve set the line Thickness to 10 pixels and the image is 400 by 300 pixels when you render in the viewport and 800 by 600 pixels when you render to the Picture viewer. If Base Resolution is set to Render Settings, the lines will be five pixels thick in the viewport and ten pixels thick in the Picture viewer.
To set the base resolution in Custom mode, do one of the following:
- Enter the width and height into the Base Width and Base Height boxes.
- Enter the width and height into the Base Width and Base Height boxes.
- Click the As Editor button to use the viewport’s current resolution.
- Click the Render Settings button to use the current resolution defined on the Render Settings > Output tab.
The Camera Near value also changes the near plane clipping, so moving this away from the camera will clip the lines. Usually this isn’t desired. However, if you are using strokes and the Clip To Screen option is disabled, lines that go near or behind the camera can have massive projections up to millions of pixels. Moving the near plane away from the camera can reduce this.
Suppose the scene has many objects in the distance that are only a few pixels tall when rendered. Creating lines for these objects would probably be a waste of render time because the lines would be so small. In such cases, use the Camera Far value to ignore the objects.
Sketch and Toon ignores any objects closer to the camera than the Near value or, if the Custom Far option is enabled, any objects further away from the camera than the Camera Far value.