CREATE STRIKING STYLISED SCENES WITH TOON SHADING

Amir Zand takes you through a simplified way to set up your scene and texture your geometries with toon materials

- Amir Zand

Coming from a stylised illustration/painting background with an appreciation for retro sci-fi, manga and comic art, I am always looking for a way to achieve those aesthetics through 3D, breaking away from the realism that usually sets the bar for the way we use these software, with a fresh approach that can be in sync with my own personal taste and the way I actually used to paint and sketch.

There are many ways to create and develop toon shaders and a variety of different styles to explore, and sometimes it can appear complex, but in this quick step by step I will take you through a simplified process that I used to create my piece ‘Break Time’.

I will cover setting up the scene, creating toon material and texturing geometries using the Arnold Renderer Toon shading system in order to create a stylised 3D scene. After creating the scene I use Photoshop for post-pro to push the image even further.

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01 START WITH A SKETCH

I usually try to begin with some quick thumbnails and sketches in my sketchbook to form some initial ideas and compositions; whether I’m working in 3D software or painting in 2D, it helps me to have a basic idea of what I am hoping to achieve.

02 SET UP THE SCENE

Next, I set up my scene with some 3D-scanned rock geometry using Quixel Bridge. It’s good to mention here that I don’t need the textures and am only using the geometries to mix and create a base for my landscape.