Automatic Cartoon and Outline Effects

We're continually developing new cartoon, painterly, and artistic effects. You can check out the latest ones, plus find links for purchasing our plugin ToonIt, at the Toonamation site, http://toonamation.com.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• comics
• rotoscoping
• animation
• Schwab
• Scanner
• Darkly
• Waking
• Life
• computer graphics
• Toonamation
• ToonIt
• After Effects
• Final Cut Pro
• Avid
• Red Giant
• Digital Anarchy
• image processing

[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.

[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.

[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Thanks, but they're currently unpublished - sorry.

[Toonerstan]

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

[elighzn]

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

[elighzn]

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

[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.