Cartoon Looks

Almost any cg image is either striving for realism or some kind of “cartoony” or hand-drawn look, but exactly what constitutes a cartoony look is very much in the eye of the beholder.

Simple Caricatured Models

This icon design (for an app called “Hive”) was rendered using all kinds of “realistic” tools, but the simplicity of the models means it looks cartoony.

Probably the simplest way to achieve a cartoony look is through the way you create models.

Cartoony Materials

Here’s the same scene rendered with simplified lighting (a single distant light) and most of the materials modified to use the Toon shader in different ways. The Toon shader “posterizes” lighting, which (combined with simplified lighting) results in hard-edged shading.

Lush Unrealism: Painterly Rendering

A still from Disney’s Tangled, one of the most technically impressive 3D animated movies to date. A much more impressive and difficult approach to producing a cartoony look is to use hand-painted textures and caricatured modeling styles. (This image is copyright Disney.)