Toon Paint Rimlight

 
 
 

| Render Tree Usage

Category: Toon

Shader Family: Surface Material

Output: Color

A utility node that encapsulates the rimlight function of the Toon Paint material shader.

Name

The shader's name. Enter any name you like, or leave the default.

Rimlight

Rimlights are regions of color painted over the base color. Their location on the surface has nothing to do with lighting in the scene, but is determined by the surface's relation to an incident vector. Rimlights' coverage of the surface may be adjusted, their boundaries softened to varying degrees, and their profiles inverted.

Color

The rimlight color. This color is painted over the base color and highlights according to the specified alpha value (0 being no contribution, and 1 being 100%).

Compositing

Choose from the available transfer modes to specify a compositing method for combining rimlight color with the underlying surface color.

  • Normal. This is the default. It simply takes the foreground.

  • Add. The foreground is added to the background. Thus, no foreground will be visible if the foreground is black. This is useful for compositing such that the foreground appears to glow.

  • Multiply. Multiplies the foreground by the background. The result is always a color darker than either original foreground or background, much like the result of two overhead transparencies stacked and projected from a single projector.

  • Screen. The inverses of the two color values are multiplied. The result is a foreground brighter than either the original foreground or background.

  • Overlay. Either multiplies or screens, depending on the value of the background underneath. The overall result is that the background is not replaced by the foreground, but is mixed with it, while weighted by the value of the original background.

  • Lighten. Compares the values of the foreground and background and chooses the lighter of the two. The overall result is that the foreground can never do anything except make the background lighter.

  • Darken. Compares the values of the foreground and background and chooses the darker of the two. The overall result is that the foreground can never do anything except make the background darker.

  • Difference. The foreground is subtracted from the background, producing an inverted color effect.

  • Hue. Uses the luminance and saturation of the background and the hue of the foreground.

  • Saturation. Uses the hue and luminance of the background and the saturation of the foreground.

  • Value. Uses the hue and saturation of the background and the luminance (value) of the foreground.

  • Soft Light. If the value of the foreground is greater/less than 50% gray, the underlying background is lightened/darkened by the foreground. This is similar to shining a diffuse light on the image.

  • Hard Light. If the value of the foreground is greater/less than 50% gray, the background is screened/multiplied by the foreground. This is similar to shining a harsh light on the image.

  • Exclusion. Similar (though not identical) to Difference mode.

Coverage

The extent of the rimlight's coverage of the base. A value of 0 results in no rimlight being painted, while a value of 1 results in a rimlight that covers the entire direction hemisphere.

Softness

Softens the rimlight's edge. A setting of 1 results in a rimlight that is totally blurred. The blur has a smooth (cubic) falloff profile centered on the rimlight's boundary.

Invert

Inverts the rimlight's falloff profile.

Vector

The rimlight effect relies on an incident vector pointed towards the surface in question. Usually this is the camera direction itself but, alternatively, a user-specified vector or one of a variety of presets may be used.

The Custom Vector can be used to create thicker ink contours on the underside of objects and thinner ink contours on top, for example.

Space

The coordinate space (World | Camera | Object) used for specifying the incident vector.

Selecting camera coordinates will compute incident direction relative to the camera ("Upper Right" remaining in the upper right of the rendered image regardless of camera position or orientation, for example).

Using world coordinates will lock the effect to the direction of a surface regardless of its global orientation, while using object coordinates will rotate the effect along with the surface.

Custom Vector

A three-dimensional (x, y, z) vector. The vector is automatically normalized internally.

Base

This is the base surface color upon which the rimlight color is painted.

Color

The surface is first painted a base color (like an undercoat of primer), before the rimlight is applied.

Render Tree Usage

You can use this shader to provide an additional layer of control over a Toon-shaded object's rimlights component. You can also connect it directly to the material node if you only need a simple base color with the rimlights.

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