Maya alternative to toon shading

[MjTheHunter]

I'm currently in the process of making a shortfilm that has a very flat look to it
Here you can see some screengrabs from zbrush


Coming from max to maya I learned that the toon shader is very different.
So far I've tried out the Vray LightMtl and the native Surface Shader, but I would like to have it be affected by GI. The problem with the standard material is that it gives me too much volume, which is what I'm trying to avoid too much of.

I've also tried out the native maya toon shader, but I don't like the results so far.


Any suggestions for a solution?


Thank you

[Undersky]

You should be able to use the VrayMtl with self illumination. Could drive it with a ramp / facing ratio if you would like some shades in there. And then use an material override to put a non-illuminated shader as the GI material.

[MjTheHunter]

I'm not following, sorry.

[Undersky]

Well, in the VrayMtl you have controls for Self illumination. When I used V-Ray in max it didn't have, so you had to blend with VrayLightMtl. However, in Maya it's built-in. So put a map in there. If you want to have some diffuse shading you can always connect your texture with a ramp map (which in turn is driven by the facing ratio in a samplerInfo, to get a camera-based falloff). Then you can add an attribute called "V-Ray Material Override" which lets you use another shader for certain effects. If you just use standard self-illumination and GI, then it will cast light, which probably isn't what you're after. But if you instead use another shader without self-illumination and use it to override your "real" shader's GI, then it will behave as if you hadn't any self-illumination at all when it comes to GI calculations.

[MjTheHunter]

Ahh cool, thank you. I'll try it out.

[MjTheHunter]

Hmm okay.. now I can get the material to affect the environmt with GI, but GI still doesn't affect the material.
Also I managed to get the facing ratio shading to work, but is it possible to affect with light instead of a camera based falloff?

[vlado]

You can also perhaps try using the Maya Ramp shader, which is implemented in V-Ray and you can add custom V-Ray attributes for the GI to it.

Best regards,
Vlado

[MjTheHunter]

Cool Vlado, thanks. I'm not that familiar with the shader, but I'll try and look into it