B&W Tests with Poser 11

This past weekend I managed to experiment with Poser 11's Comic Book Preview mode. This is a very cool feature that creates a solid black line around 3D objects, based on their geometry. This is a very cool feature that is often confused with something called "Toon" rendering.  In a future post, I''ll  not the same thing, and I'll post some sample images to illustrate the differences.

In the meantime, though, I thought I'd post the image I worked on this weekend.

B&W Test created with Poser 11 & Manga Studio

I'm very pleased with the outcome of this test. This is very close to the effect I'm looking to create for a comic book project I'm working on. Also, it was very fast to create. I can imagine these techniques fitting nicely into my workflow.

The creation process included:

Setting up the figure, including the materials which needed some tweaking (light textures or no textures, and no bump maps).

1. Adjusting the lights (only 2 infinite lights, with the shadow maps texture sizes pumped up to 4096).
2. Finding the right size for the Geometric Edge (I think this is set at either .25 or .33)
3. And then rendering two images at very large size (about 4,000 pixels -- the large size is important for capturing details, but it's very fast because this is black and white with no textures visible):
   - Image 1 has small shadowy areas (the black shadows in this image)
   - Image 2 has large shadowy areas (the gray textured areas)
4. I then combined the two images in Manga Studio 5 and used the large shadowy areas as a guide to apply the tone.
5. I also did some hand editing of the edges (there were some gaps here and there, and places where I wanted thicker/thinner lines). 
6. I also did some hand editing of the tone (like on the curves on the badges, and around his eyes).
7. I also used a Manga Studio tone for the background.