aVersionOfReality
@AversionReality • 8,811 subscribers
Developing stylized 3D rendering in Blender. I build custom tools + pipeline now. https://t.co/XJ2dNUpt2G
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The Fondant Custom Normals v1.0.0 addon for Blender is finally out! Now you can fix most topology issues in your 3D anime and toon shading. Can be used directly in Blender, or as Custom Vertex Normals for game and vtuber models. Link in the next message. The basic addon is completely free. We will continue releasing more character tools in the near future, including an adjustable proxy mesh for anime faces.
aVersionOfReality272,709 views • 1 year ago
Fondant Easy Custom Normals 1.1.0 for Blender is out! In addition to better Weighted Normals and Laplacian Smooth, you can now use Extrapolated Boundaries to fix the edges of meshes. Clean anime toon shading with less hassle, holding loops, or workarounds. Link below ($0).
aVersionOfReality119,413 views • 1 year ago
Putting the finishing touches on the Anime Face Normals proxy. Still setting up the geometry nodes modifier inputs and other controls. It is easy to adjust the placement and shape of the shading with the rig, and the modifier has options for the shape of the interpolation, and automatic mask setup that blends back to the mesh Normals on the forehead and below the chin. The Proxy Normals modifier automatically feeds into the Laplacian Smooth modifier to benefit from smoothing and Weighted Normals. There's a lot more planned to give more control of the number of curves, points on them, interpolation+falloff, masking, and more. But I'll save those for future updates and not make the wait longer!
aVersionOfReality103,668 views • 11 months ago
Here's what's coming next for the Fondant Custom Normals Addon: Adjustable 3D anime face proxy mesh! If you've tried the proxy method before, you know that it can be difficult to get good results as you need the right topology and shape for good Normals, and also for it to fit to the face properly for a clean transfer. The solution is to use two proxies: one for the shape, and one for the fitting. But that gets cumbersome! And it is still often unintuitive to get the correct shading shapes. The next major feature of the addon will be aiming to solve these problems by providing a convenient proxy mesh that you can fit to your character's face with some rig controls, and then handles the rest under the hood with Geometry Nodes. All the benefits of complexity without having to deal with it yourself! This clip shows the general idea, but is early stages. I'll be sharing more as I build it out.
aVersionOfReality106,443 views • 1 year ago
In the final stages of testing my Blender Compositor Line Art addon before release. Here's a look at how it works on a very high detail character. We have lines based on toon shading and vertex color ID groups. You can see it works very cleanly in some areas, but then runs into issues in others. That is because this mesh is complex but doesn't have smoothed normals yet, which causes the toon shading to create very small shaded areas that become lines. (We'll see it with Smoothed Normals next update.) This is the double-edged sword of this method, and any other Screen Space Extraction method, including the new Raycast Node: they are extremely precise, which allows very high detail and fine control, but also means you need to guard against bad inputs. But my toolset gives you full control over what data you create lines from, so you can ensure clean ID groups, run lines on different Normals than you shade with, mask at any stage, or anything else you need! And of course, most line methods (especially Inverted Hull) completely fail on complex or dirty geometry.
aVersionOfReality16,405 views • 1 month ago
The Fondant Easy Custom Normals Blender addon 2.0.0 is out! We've added the Anime Face Proxy Normals tool I've been developing as a new tier to help fund further development ($10). Get it on Gumroad (link below.) The free tier Laplacian Smooth modifier has also received fixes and optimizations. The Normals Proxy is a set of rigged Curves + Geometry Nodes magic. Place it around your anime face and get clean toon shading fast (compared to other methods.) Easily adjust the shape with the rig for different expressions and poses, add it to your character's rig, and even shapekey it for expression keys!
aVersionOfReality62,452 views • 10 months ago
The #geometrynodes Curve Normals Proxy Rig is almost ready! You place it on the face and adjust some controls to line things up, and it just works. The controls can be worked with in lots of different ways. You can attach it to an existing rig or animate it. Those bones are controlling a mesh which controls the curve points, so you can also make Shapekeys on the meshes instead and Drive them to match other expression keys! The forehead above the top curve blends to Radial Normals, and under the chin blends to the actual mesh Normals. I'm adding the rest of the controls to allow completely arbitrary Normals per curve point, and then its just cleanup and it can be released! (There's lots more that can be added to it like falloff and interpolation controls, but if I try to put everything into the first version it'll never release.)
aVersionOfReality57,424 views • 11 months ago
The Fondant Easy Custom Normals addon v2.1.0 is here! Works in Blender 4.3-4.5. I've reworked the Laplacian Smooth Modifier to run on Face Corners, giving us more control and quad mesh support. Also optimizations and new features. No longer needs to run slow triangulation operations. Stability problems are addressed by Momentum Smoothing, which also allows the strength to be scaled up as high as 3 without blowing everything up. So you can do more smoothing in fewer iterations! And there's more control of how things interact with the smoothing. Instead of only choosing how strong it is on a given point, now you can scale the amount it contributes to the smoothing of its neighbors. Or reduce its Original Normal strength to allow it to be overwritten or filled in. These changes and more are all part of the free tier of the addon. Please consider picking up the paid Face Proxy system to support continued development!
aVersionOfReality45,613 views • 8 months ago
I can finally announce the project I've been working on with Joce ! Fondant is building a new app that brings avatars and vtubing to Web. Multiplayer lobbies for vtuber streamer collabs or just hangouts with friends, as well as character customization tools building up to a full creator. We are using a WebGL and WebGPU techstack, so part of the point is to provide a cross-platform alternative to the current Unity based app ecosystem, and also to build tools that people can use to create or modify characters without going through a DCC (Blender, Maya, etc). For now we're starting with the basics: multiplayer lobbies, VRM support, and some tools like merging accessories into existing VRMs in the quoted post, and transferring Custom Vertex Normals from proxy meshes. My role is stylized shaders and procedural character creation. I've been working on NPR Shaders and tools to help build and customize 3D anime characters in Blender for years. With WebGPU, we can bring it into Web. My hope is to build a full character customization system for the Web with next gen toon shaders, and also a matching set of tools in Blender for serious content creators. But it is early days still, and there's a lot to be done! Here's the latest WIP of the rig for fitting proxy meshes to new faces.
aVersionOfReality64,739 views • 1 year ago
The Fondant Custom Normals Blender addon is being tested, and we're aiming for a 1.0 release next week! The first feature is the Weighted Normals + Laplacian Smoothing Geometry Nodes modifier. This let's you calculate Normals that are as clean as a nice quad mesh even if your topology is a mess and triangulated! We'll be following up with more tools to support creating high quality Normals for 3D anime and vtuber characters. We have an optimized adjustable Face Normal Transfer proxy mesh nearly ready to go. Check out the Docs to see more about the Addon's features and workflow (link in the reply.)
aVersionOfReality53,806 views • 1 year ago
Need clean toon shading for your Avatar? Making a setup to easily and accurately refit proxy meshes to different anime faces in Blender. Its a bone rig on the proxy mesh and some projection math in Geometry Nodes and a Normal Transfer. Part of tools to help vtubers upgrade.
aVersionOfReality51,125 views • 1 year ago
My upcoming Blender Compositor Line Art addon offers a huge amount of control. It uses attributes and AOVs, meaning you can customize lines on the mesh or material level! But it also means complex setup. So I'm including options that make it easy to add and remove.
aVersionOfReality11,307 views • 2 months ago
I needed better accuracy in my Blender vertex attribute smoothing, so I built a Laplacian Smooth in Geometry Nodes. Notice the difference compared to blur: it preserves the geometry spacing on triangulated meshes. Basically, it smooths complex topologies as if they were quads. Blender has a modifier version, but it doesn't give as much control. And of course, the next step is to adapt it for smoothing arbitrary attributes, like Normals!
aVersionOfReality46,069 views • 1 year ago
Slowly adding to my tool stack for Hallway . This is a spline patch making a mesh that is wrapped from UV space onto the model. There's also setups to unwrap meshes on the surface back to UV space. Working in UV space enables a lot of procedural workflows. #b3d
aVersionOfReality81,464 views • 2 years ago
I've been quiet due to various work. Here's a glimpse at some smooth anime avatar face Normals using my Geometry Nodes tools in Blender. These use an adjustable Lofted proxy mesh to ensure even spacing even while editing the mesh shape. Character created by Joce Joce
aVersionOfReality47,111 views • 1 year ago
Everyone using Blender should learn #geometrynodes. It would take ages to what I do here in a few seconds by other methods. And I'm getting to leverage the Laces generator by @BeltMakerTool. I like my UV projection setup because I can adjust and block in fast #b3d
aVersionOfReality45,827 views • 2 years ago
Taking a look at Camera based changes to the Face Proxy Normals. 3D anime characters have the fundamental problem that Normals which produce the right shading from the front often don't from 3/4ths and side view without making big compromises. On this character, the puffiness of the cheeks means it doesn't work right. If we reduce them, we ruin the silhouette of the geometry. If we change the Normals further around the side to get a shading terminator that does work in both views, then when the light moves it will probably have new problems at other angles. There are combos that work pretty well for every angle, but they limit your face shape options. Everything is easier if you can make Camera based changes! This is rotating the Normals on the proxy before transfer to the face in Geometry Nodes. Its the same as rotating the bones shown at the start. Since there are only 3 spline profiles, its a bit low res to get this quite right, but you get the general idea. Its going to take some experimenting to figure out the best way to handle it all, but it will be much easier to author on the proxy than on the face.
aVersionOfReality19,395 views • 8 months ago