V-Ray for Maya toon shading

Software:
Maya 2018 | V-Ray 3.6

Toon shading in V-Ray consists of two elements:

  1. A VRayToon node that creates a graphic contour effect on the rendered image.
  2. A flat shader that uses surface luminance data to define color areas.
    * A VRayLightMtl can be used for that.

Creating the VRayToon node:

  1. Click the Create V-Ray Toon button in the V-Ray toolbar to create a VRayToon node.
  2. In the VRayToon node attributes, set line thickness, color, and more graphic properties.
    * if you created a VRayToon node and it’s not selected RMB click the Create V-Ray Toon button in the V-Ray toolbar and choose Select VRayToon node.
    * To delete the VRayToon node, select it and press Delete.

Creating the toon shader:

  1. Create a VRayLightMTL node as the object’s surface shader.
  2. Create a Ramp texture node, connect it’s output color to the VRayLightMTL’s color input and delete it’s accompanying 2D placement node.
  3. Create a surfaceLuminance node and connect it’s output to the Ramp node’s V Coord input.
  4. Optional remapValue node between the surfaceLuminance node and the Ramp node to clamp the luminance values.
  5. Optional floatMath node to scale or manipulate the surfaceLuminance output value.

Untitled-1Untitled-2

Related:
Arnold for Maya Toon Shading

Basic Toon Shading in Blender & Cycles

Software:
Blender 2.79

  1. Set a Toon BSDF as your model’s material.
  2. Activate the Freestyle option in the Render Settings, and set Line Thickness,
    * More line style settings are found in the Render Layers settings.
    * Freestyle lines are only rendered in the final render (F12) and are not rendered in the Cycles viewport interactive render mode.

Minimal Toon setup:Untitled-2.jpg

A more controllable setup:
2 Toon BSDF’s, one for color shading and one for highlights added together, and a Background shader override to control shaded area darkness:
Untitled-1

Simple Toon shader setup in Maya & Arnold

Software:
Maya 2018

Use a Surface Luminance node as a V coordinate input value for a Ramp (V Ramp) node containing the toon colors.

* Note that the Clamp node is important so results will be ass expected, it clamps the Surface Luminance values to 0.99 so the V coordinate will nor cycle back to the beginning of the Ramp.

Untitled-1.jpg

Related:
Toon Shading in V-Ray for Maya