The Cartoon effect simplifies and smooths
the shading and colors in an image and adds strokes to the edges
between features. The overall result is to decrease contrast in
areas with low contrast and increase contrast in areas with high contrast.
The result can be an image that resembles a sketch or cartoon, or
the result can be more subtle. You can use the Cartoon effect to
simplify or abstract an image for stylistic purposes, to call attention
to areas of detail, or to obscure the poor quality of the original
footage.
An advantage that the Cartoon effect has over some other effects
and techniques that provide a similar result is the superior temporal
coherence that the Cartoon effect provides. This means that
the result of applying the Cartoon effect does not vary greatly
from one frame to the next if the two frames are very similar.
This effect works with 8-bpc, 16-bpc, and 32-bpc color.
The Cartoon effect works in three stages:
It smooths the image and removes minor variations
with a blurring operation similar to that used by the Bilateral
Blur effect. Modify the Detail Radius and Detail Threshold properties
to control this phase.
It finds edges in the image and applies a stroke to them,
similar to the Find Edges effect. Modify properties in the Edge
and Advanced property groups to control how the edges are determined
and how the strokes are drawn.
It reduces the variations in luminance and color in the image,
simplifying the shading and coloring. Modify properties in the Fill
property group to control this quantization (posterization).
Begin with Render set to Fill Only, and first
achieve the result that you want for the colors of the image. Next,
choose either Edges or Fill & Edges, and establish the basic
appearance that you want for the edges. Use the properties in the
Advanced property group to fine-tune the appearance after you’ve
established the basic appearance using the other controls.
As with any other properties, you can animate the properties
of the Cartoon effect. Settings that work well for one part of a
scene may not be optimal for another part of a scene. For example,
you may want fewer colors and thicker edge strokes for a close-up
of a face than for an action scene with many subjects and a lot
of detail.
For a video tutorial about the Cartoon effect, go to the Adobe
website at www.adobe.com/go/lrvid4066_ae.
Chris Meyer provides a video tutorial about the Cartoon effect
in the After Effects CS4 New Creative Techniques
series on the Lynda.com website.
Cartoon effect properties
- Render
- Fill, Edges, or Fill & Edges. Determines which operations
to perform and which results to display.
- Detail Radius
- The radius for the blurring operation that is used to smooth
the image and remove details before the operation to find edges.
A larger radius for a blur means that more pixels are averaged together
to determine each pixel value, so increasing the Detail Radius value
increases the blurriness.
- Detail Threshold
- The blur operation that the Cartoon effect performs is similar to
that used by the Bilateral Blur effect. (See Bilateral Blur effect.) The radius of the blur is automatically decreased
in areas where an edge or other prominent detail exists. The Detail
Threshold value determines how the Cartoon effect decides what areas
contain features to be preserved and what areas should be blurred
by the full amount. A lower Detail Threshold value causes more fine
details to be preserved. A higher Detail Threshold value causes
a more simplistic cartoon-like result, with fewer details preserved.
- Fill
- The luminance values in the image are quantized (posterized)
according to the settings of the Shading Steps and Shading Smoothness
properties. If the Shading Smoothness value is 0, then the result
is very similar to a simple posterization, with sharp transitions
between values. A higher Shading Smoothness value causes the colors
to blend together more naturally, with more gradual transitions
between posterized values, preserving gradients.
The smoothing
phase considers the amount of detail that exists in the original image
so that areas that are already smooth (such as the gradient of a
sky) are not quantized unless that Shading Smoothness value is low.
- Edge
- These properties determine the basics of what is considered
an edge and how the stroke applied to an edge appears.
- Threshold
- Determines how different two pixels must be for the Cartoon
effect to consider them to be one either side of an edge. Increase
the Threshold value to cause more areas to be identified as edges.
- Width
- The thickness of the stroke that is added to the edge.
- Softness
- Increase this value to soften the transition between the
edge’s stroke and the surrounding colors.
- Opacity
- The opacity of the stroke applied to the edge.
- Advanced
- Advanced settings related to edges and performance.
- Edge Enhancement
- Positive values sharpen the edges; negative values spread the
edges. The enhancement distorts the entire image by warping pixels
toward or away from the edges, which has the result of sharpening
or spreading the edges.
- Edge Black Level
- When this property is 0, only the pixels that have been identified
as being part of an edge receive a stroke; when Render is set to
Edges, the image is white except in areas with a pure black stroke.
Increase the Edge Black Level property by a small amount to add
shades of gray in the Edges phase of rendering. Increase this property
by a larger amount to approach a result that resembles white strokes
on a black background.
- Edge Contrast
- The contrast in the grayscale representation of the edges.
- Performance
- If your computer includes a display card with a GPU that
supports OpenGL, the Cartoon effect can use the GPU to accelerate
its processing.
