Automatic Cartoon and Outline Effects

[freddytk421]

How can you make a line art subject and a normal back round using a green screen? I cant figure out how to do it.

[Toonerstan]

Shoot the subject against green screen and make a duplicate copy of the image. Apply your outline filter of choice to one copy. That'll be your foreground image. Take the other copy and use it to create an alpha channel matte with the green converted to black and the rest white, e.g., you could threshold in inverted green. Use the matte to compose the non-green areas of the outline foreground over your background image of choice.

[freddytk421]

@Toonerstan Thanks man. I finally got it to work. you da man.

[linx01untold]

couldnt you do something similar with setting a extract matte to a luminance key and putting a white solid underneath the resulting image

[Toonerstan]

Besides the extra work, that turns everything into pastel colors, which is a poor fit with dark images and regions. This automatically produces color segments that remain close to the original luminance.

[qishilee]

wow! how did you do this? is it adobe AE? teach me!

[Toonerstan]

Glad you like them.  These are effects I programmed from scratch, available in the AE/FCP plugin ToonIt distributed by Red Giant Software.

[elighzn]

Great job, sir! I wonder what algorithms you are using to generate these effects? Is there any journal papers available for that?

[Toonerstan]

Right now we're keeping them under wraps as trade secrets. That might eventually evolve into something else.

[elighzn]

I thought of the similar effect for my DIP term project, and it turned out I googled your product out on Internet. For sure, I was very well impressed. It seems the picture was reconstructed with both DoG and some edge-preserving smoothing filter, based on my humble research. Sir, I have no intention nor ability to brake the trade secret, but any advice would be appreciated, 'cuz you are apparantly the most senior guy on the Internet over the subject!

[Toonerstan]

Thanks for the kind words. I like to think so, but opinions vary. :-) Anyway, I'll get back to you privately with some feedback.

[SerapH7577]

a scanner darkly style very nice

[Toonerstan]

From Red Giant Software under Motion Graphics Products. It's also bundled with Pinnacle Studio 14 Ultimate and Ultimate Collection for around $100.

[ilhamks]

amazing work...very nice

[apodo360]

nicee

[jmm1233]

i found a little trick when using toonit in premiere pro , if you use a second render as a image matte tracked to the first video which has toonit , adding a find edges to the second video and track it as luma adding a small turbulent displace effect you can get the wobbly lines

[Toonerstan]

Thanks for the suggestion.

[seanwalrus]

check out the mv of a-ha take on me.

[JRHartly1984]

What's the music playing in the background?

[Toonerstan]

The music is Visualizer by CJACKS, available at opsound.

[noxvet]

How long does it take to render, eh?

[Toonerstan]

It's not real-time yet (about half-sec per frame for most effects in SD), but we're working on it for next year.

[Megavideos12345]

wow can u tell me how u made it black and white like that i want it plz and what program do u use

[jamesbondaygee]

It's kinda cool. I like the simple black and white sketch the most.

[tbillygoat1]

hey, what program did you use to create this effect?

[Ahya728]

maybe that's the kind of effect they use in the people of the NFS Most Wanted.. little of the out line and smoothening the colors..

[Nat5184]

This is so cool!

I'm going to try this in and art or music video someday.

[Creative1me]

This illustration sold me on the plug-in. I found it very easy to use.

I uploaded one clip from a show I produced and it is posted, although broadcast quality is excellent, compression wasn't very kind on YouTube...

search: The Bobby Sled Run

[Hadezul2]

Nice effect! I'm curioius. Did you try keying out the white in the black and white footage, and overlaying it on the colour footage to get a colour cartoon look with black edges? Just thought I'd like to see what that looks like.

[Toonerstan]

Yeah, I chose to use a thicker, opaque outline (comic outline) against the white background, and a thinner, semi-transparent outline (soft outline) against the color cartoon, but either effect could be used either place. There are multiple examples of cartoon videos with thick black outlines shown at the Digital Anarchy site (my partners in distributing ToonIt!), cause their president likes that look.

[espido]

where can i get the serial for toonit ? please

[Toonerstan]

How about by paying for it at the Digital Anarchy site? They're my partners and are distributing it, and that way my wife and I get money for groceries. Thanks.

[thedecline15]

are these filters in final cut pro?

[Toonerstan]

Yup - see my answers to the last two comments.

[badboyital]

how do you create that effect with final cut pro?

[Toonerstan]

The effects are in ToonIt!, which is available as a plugin for both Final Cut Pro and After Effects.

[femalewithtalent]

This is really cool...what program did you use to rotoscope?

[Toonerstan]

Software that I wrote myself. It's currently built into the ToonIt! filter marketed by Digital Anarchy and available for trial download at their web site.

[Rebldoomer]

Hi you said you wrote the software yourself? What do you need to make your own software? And how do you make it?

[Toonerstan]

It's in C/C++, although I prototyped in Image Python. We work with partner companies who handle the API to Adobe or Final cut and add the front end GUI.

[elighzn]

Great job, sir! Where can I read about the algorithms you are using here?

[Toonerstan]

Thanks, but they're currently unpublished - sorry.

[iflytoohigh]

wow. that is pretty close. it is similar to the Schwab commercials, scanner darkly stuff. however, the process used in those animations is actually hand drawn. it is not an algorithm effect laid on top of video.

the program used is called rotoshop ( aka. color engine ) written by bob sabiston. i know this because i'm neighbors with one of the commercial animators. those commercials are all hand drawn vector illustrations using interpolated rotoscoping techniques.

[topaboss]

cool program. faster than exporting movie as .flm and doing cutout frame by frame in photoshop eeeek

[weeldarb]

So you used median for the color one, and and find edges/ levels/ hue saturation for the b&w right? Do you know a way to clean up the lines in the outline? I'm looking to do a similar effect, but a little cleaner.

[Toonerstan]

Actually both the color and b&w effects were created using algorithms I wrote myself. The differences between my output and your suggestions should be clearer if you check out the demo at higher resolution at the Toonamation site. I don't know of a 2D edge detect that produces cleaner, artistically useful results than this. It can optionally be set thinner, though at the cost of loss of detail.

[Profilaktiks]

hey what's up?

if you want cleaner edges you should try using animated erm. hehe back to basics.:D

[parastie]

Umm....aren't these the same effects available with VLC???

[Toonerstan]

Umm...no.