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MAST 01/07

A Stylised Cartoon Renderer for Toon-Shading of 3D Character Models

Jung Shin
Department of Computer Science
University of Canterbury

Abstract

This thesis describes two new techniques for enhancing the rendering quality of cartoon characters in toon-shading applications. The proposed methods can be used to improve the output quality of current cel shaders. The first technique which uses 2D image-based algorithms, enhances the silhouettes of the input geometry and reduces the computer generated artefacts. The silhouettes are found by using the Sobel filter and reconstructed by Bezier curve fitting. The intensity of the reconstructed silhouettes is then modified to create a stylised appearance. In the second technique, a new hair model based on billboarded particles is introduced. This method is found to be particularly useful for generating toon-like specular highlights for hair, which are important in cartoon animations. The whole rendering framework is implemented in C++ using the OpenGL API. OpenGL extensions and GPU programming are used to take the advantage of the functionalities of currently available graphics hardware. The programming of graphics hardware is done using Cg, a high level shader language.